Sono stati
portati alla luce in nord Italia i resti scheletrici di un individuo che visse tra i 40.000 ed i
30.000 anni fa: si pensa siano quelli di un ‘ibrido’ umano/neandertaliano.
Lo studio si
incentra sulla mandibola del reperto – dissepolto in un sito denominato ‘Riparo
di Mezzena’ (Verona) – nella regione italiana dei monti Lessini. All’epoca
convivevano in Europa uomini anatomicamente
moderni e Neanderthaliani.
Silvana
Condemi, antropologa e coautrice del lavoro,ed il capo ricercatore del CNRS
dell’Università di Marsiglia hanno riferito che l’aspetto del mento del
soggetto cui appartenevano le ossa era intermedio fra le caratteristiche umane
(mento sporgente in avanti, fortemente pronunciato) e quelle neandethaliane (mandibola
sfuggente, con mento praticamente inesistente).
Sono stati
studiati gli aspetti del DNA e le ricostruzioni computerizzate in 3D e si sono
effettuati i paragoni con le caratteristiche generali di Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
Ed ecco – in
sintesi – la sorpresa: l’analisi
genetica ha mostrato che il DNA
mitocondriale (mtDNA) è del tipo appartenente al Neanderthal.
Dato che
mtDNA è un tipo di DNA (un DNA piccolo, anulare, intra mitocondriale, cioè contenuto
in minuscoli organelli produttori d’energia che si trovano nella parte
citoplasmatica della cellula), che si trasmette di madre in figlio/a, solamente
per via femminile (dato che nello spermatozoo, maschile, non c’è materiale
citoplasmatico, che va quindi perso), i ricercatori hanno potuto concludere che
le ossa ritrovate appartenevano ad un individuo ‘ibrido’ (se vogliamo usare forse
un po’ inappropriatamente questo termine) frutto di un incrocio tra una femmina
Neanderthal ed un maschio umano moderno.
Questo
ritrovamento sarebbe in accordo con la teoria di un lento e progressivo processo
di sostituzione del Neanderthal da parte dei più recentemente arrivati umani
moderni.
Qualunque
siano state le condizioni dell’accoppiamento, il tipo di DNA mitocondriale non
lascia dubbi circa a quale gruppo appartenessero i genitori rispettivamente.
Il lavoro è
stato pubblicato sulla rivista Plos ONE:
Possible Interbreeding in Late Italian Neanderthals? New Data from the Mezzena Jaw (Monti Lessini, Verona, Italy)
- Silvana Condemi mail,
Affiliation: UMR 7268 CNRS/Aix-Marseille
Université/EFS ADES - Anthropologie bioculturelle, Droit, Ethique et Santé
Faculté de Médecine - Secteur Nord Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
- Aurélien Mounier,
Affiliations: UMR
7268 CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/EFS ADES - Anthropologie bioculturelle,
Droit, Ethique et Santé Faculté de Médecine - Secteur Nord Aix-Marseille
Université, Marseille, France, The Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary
Studies Biological, Anthropology Division, Department of Archaeology and
Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Paolo Giunti,
Affiliation: Istituto Italiano di
Preistoria e Protostoria, Firenze, Italy
- Martina Lari,
Affiliation: Università di Firenze,
Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica, Laboratorio di Antropologia,Unità di
Antropologia Molecolare/Paleogenetica, Firenze, Italy
- David Caramelli,
Affiliation: Università di Firenze,
Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica, Laboratorio di Antropologia,Unità di
Antropologia Molecolare/Paleogenetica, Firenze, Italy
- Laura Longo mail
Affiliation: Musei Civici Fiorentini,
Firenze, Italy
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In this article we examine the mandible of Riparo
Mezzena a Middle Paleolithic rockshelter in the Monti Lessini (NE Italy,
Verona) found in 1957 in association with Charentian Mousterian lithic
assemblages. Mitochondrial DNA analysis performed on this jaw and on other
cranial fragments found at the same stratigraphic level has led to the
identification of the only genetically typed Neanderthal of the Italian
peninsula and has confirmed through direct dating that it belongs to a late
Neanderthal. Our aim here is to re-evaluate the taxonomic affinities of the
Mezzena mandible in a wide comparative framework using both comparative
morphology and geometric morphometrics. The comparative sample includes
mid-Pleistocene fossils, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. This
study of the Mezzena jaw shows that the chin region is similar to that of other
late Neanderthals which display a much more modern morphology with an incipient
mental trigone (e.g. Spy 1, La Ferrassie, Saint-Césaire). In our view, this
change in morphology among late Neanderthals supports the hypothesis of
anatomical change of late Neanderthals and the hypothesis of a certain degree
of interbreeding with AMHs that, as the dating shows, was already present in
the European territory. Our observations on the chin of the Mezzena mandible
lead us to support a non abrupt phylogenetic transition for this period in
Europe.
Citation: Condemi S, Mounier A,
Giunti P, Lari M, Caramelli D, et al. (2013) Possible
Interbreeding in Late Italian Neanderthals? New Data from the Mezzena Jaw
(Monti Lessini, Verona, Italy). PLoS ONE 8(3): e59781.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059781
Editor: David Frayer, University of Kansas, United States of
America
Received: October 30, 2012; Accepted: February 18, 2013; Published: March 27, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Condemi et
al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report.
Competing
interests: Please note that in accord with PLOS ONE's guidelines,
the fact that one of the authors of this article, David Caramelli is a PLOS ONE
Editorial Board member does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS
ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
One of the most frequently debated questions in paleoanthropology concerns
the arrival in Europe of our species, Homo sapiens, anatomically modern humans (AMHs), and the fate of the humans who lived
in this territory prior to their arrival, the Neanderthals.
For many decades there were two different responses to this question:
according to one point of view the Neanderthals did not really disappear, but
were incorporated into the new incoming modern humans. Authors who support this
hypothesis have argued that there was a change in morphology of late
Neanderthals [1]–[3] and have
interpreted certain anatomic features observed among early AMHs in Europe as a
result of a continuity with Neanderthals[4], [5]. A certain degree of continuity has also been
supported by archaeologists who have identified much more complex forms of
behavior among Neanderthals than was previously acknowledged [6], [7]. European Neanderthals have been considered to be not
only the producers of Mousterian assemblages but also the makers of the later
so-called "transitional assemblages" (Chatelperronian, Uluzzian,
Bohunician, Szeletian) [8], [9], either by internal modification [7], [9], [10] or through
acculturation by AMHs [11], [12].
An opposing model has claimed that there is great discontinuity between
Neanderthals and modern humans [13], [14] and relates the
demise of the Neanderthals to the territorial expansion of AMHs from Africa
through the Near East.
The scenarios which have generally been accepted argue that this
territorial expansion occurred during a period of great climatic change [15], [16]. According to this hypothesis, the expansion of AMHs,
identified primarily through their association with Aurignacian assemblages [13], [17], pushed the Neanderthals associated with Mousterian
assemblages toward southern Europe and, in particular, toward the Iberian and
Italian peninsulas in the Mediterranean area [11], [18]. This view was reinforced by genetic data which have
shown that there is no contribution of Neanderthals to the mitochondrial DNA of H. sapiens [19], [20].
During recent years, data collected in Europe that seemed to support this
view have been questioned. First, Neanderthal nuclear DNA shows a low level of
interbreeding (4%) with sapiens [21]. Furthermore, H. sapiens is now associated with local (Uluzzian) so-called "transitional
assemblages" at Grotta del Cavallo in the southern Italian peninsula while
the human remains were previously thought to be Neanderthals [9], [22]. The presence of AMHs in Grotta del Cavallo has been
demonstrated based on the morphological pattern of the enamel on human deciduous
teeth, and the age of Uluzzian artifacts associated with the teeth (levels of
unit E) has been re-analysed [23]. The new dating shows that the AMHs reached the
southern Italian peninsula at around 45–43 ka BP, which is at least 7000 years
earlier than was previously supposed. This study indicated the difficulty of
advancing a general explanation [11] valid for all of
Europe, since the replacement of Neanderthals by AMHs on the Italian peninsula
took place earlier [23], [24] and was probably
different than that which occurred in Iberia [25]–[27].
In this article we examine the morphology of the Mezzena mandible (Figure
1) found in 1957 [28]. We argue that the mandibular morphology of late
Italian Neanderthals, in particular the chin, may help us better understand the
transition between the two human groups. The study of the human remains of
Middle Paleolithic Riparo Mezzena, a rockshelter in the Monti Lessini (Venetian
region -NE Italy) associated with Charentian Mousterian lithic assemblages [29], [30] has led to the
identification of the only genetically typed Neanderthal of the Italian
peninsula (cf. [31]–[33] and this study)
and has confirmed through dating that it belongs to a late Neanderthal (i.e.
34.5±655 ka) [30]. Our aim is to re-evaluate the taxonomic affinities
of the Mezzena jaw in a wide comparative framework using both comparative
morphology and geometric morphometrics analyses. The comparative sample
includes mid-Pleistocene fossils, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans
(cf. [34], Tables
1 and S1). This study of the Mezzena mandible shows that the
chin region is similar to that of other late Neanderthals which display a much
more modern morphology with an incipient mental trigone (e.g. Spy 1, Saint
Césaire). In our view, this change in morphology among late Neanderthals
reopens the debate on the "more modern like" morphology of late
Neanderthals and can lend support to the hypothesis of a certain degree of
continuity with AMHs or a possible interbreeding with them.
