Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

by Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Traces of soft bodies so deep in the past are incredibly rare, and their immediacy is in contrast to the dry fossils with which researchers must try to define ancestry for Neanderthals. Genetics tells us they emerged as a lineage around 700 ka, and though the Gran Dolina people lived only around 100,000 years prior to this, they don’t look very alike. It’s possible that more than one sort of hominin lived in Europe at this point, but many bones over the next few hundred millennia somewhat resemble contemporary fossils from Africa, including a massive lower jaw found in Germany in 1907 that was named H. heidelbergensis. While these hominins were long claimed as likely predecessors to Neanderthals, more recent work at a third Atapuerca locale, the Sima de los Huesos, has refined the picture. How the 28-odd hominins – many in exceptional condition – ended up deep inside the ‘Pit of Bones’ here is something of a mystery.