Like the famous ancient people extinct because of incest?

DNA analysis from fossil toe bones of the Neanderthal woman, dating back to 50,000 years, shows that signs of inbreeding may have been common in these ancient generations.

According to Dr. Kay Prufer, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, this toe bone was discovered in the cave in Siberia since 2010. It is also the place where Denisovan fossils have been discovered since 2008. .

Toe bones reveal inbreeding in Neanderthals.(Photo: mpg.de)

After analyzing DNA sequences and examining the mitochondrial genome of fossils, the gene is only passed from a single mother. That can confirm that the parents of this woman are very closely related.

'We believe that the parents of these Neanderthals are brothers of the same mother, or uncle and niece, aunt, aunt and nephew, a grandfather and a niece, or grandmother and grandson', Fossil team confirmed.

Inbreeding causes the Neanderthals to extinction?

Remarkably, the analysis also revealed that inbreeding is not a rare event.'Parents with blood relatives are very close, even if they analyze their previous generation, there is this,' said Dr. Prufer. At the same time, this inbreeding can lead to a relatively small population of Neanderthals and make them extinct.

In addition, the results of fossil DNA sequencing also showed that Neanderthals and modern humans originating from Denisovans had been associated with each other around the end of the Pleistocene (12,000-126,000 years ago).

All of these findings have been published online in Nature on December 19, 2013.