198T Poster - Population Genetics
Thursday June 09, 8:30 PM - 9:15 PM

Authors:
Laurits Skov ^1,2; Stéphane Peyrégne ²; Divyaratan Popli ²; Leonardo Iasi ²; Thibaut Devièse ^8,13; Viviane Slon ^2,10,11; Elena Zavala ²; Mateja Hajdinjak ²; Arev Sümer ²; Alba Mesa ²; Daniel Comeskey ^8,14; Anatoly Derevianko ⁴; Aliona Kharevich ⁴; Sergey Markin ⁴; Sahra Talamo ^15,16; Katerina Douka ^9,12,17; Maciej Krajcarz ³; Richard Roberts ^6,7; Thomas Higham ^8,9,17; Bence Viola ⁵; Andrey Krivoshapkin ⁴; Kseniya Kolobova ⁴; Janet Kelso ²; Matthias Meyer ²; Svante Pääbo ²; Benjamin Peter ²

Affiliations:
1) Dept of Molecular & Cell Biology; 2) Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany; 3) Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland; 4) Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia; 5) Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.; 6) Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia; 7) Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia; 8) Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; 9) Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna 1030 Austria; 10) Department of Anatomy and Anthropology and Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, 6997801 Tel Aviv, Israel; 11) The Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, 6997801 Tel Aviv, Israel; 12) Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany; 13) European Centre for Research and Education in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE), Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Collège de France, Aix-en-Provence, France; 14) Syft Technologies Ltd, 3 Craft Place, Middleton, PO Box 28 149, Christchurch 8242, New Zealand; 15) Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna Via Selmi 2, Bologna, 40126, Italy; 16) Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany; 17) Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS), University of Vienna, A-1030, Vienna, Austria

Keywords:
Ancient DNA

Genomic analyses of Neanderthals across parts of their geographic range have previously provided insights into their population history and relationship to modern humans, but the social organization of Neanderthal communities remains poorly understood. Here, we present genetic data for 13 Neanderthals from two Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia: 11 from Chagyrskaya Cave and two from Okladnikov Cave - making this the largest genetic study of a Neanderthal population to date. We used hybridization capture to obtain genome-wide nuclear sequence data, as well as mitochondrial and Y chromosome sequences. All Chagyrskaya individuals are very closely related, including a father-daughter pair and a pair of second-degree relatives, indicating that at least some of the individuals lived at the same time. Up to a third of these individuals’ genomes occur in long segments of homozygosity, suggesting that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals were part of a small community. In addition, the Y chromosome diversity is an order of magnitude lower than the mitochondrial diversity, a pattern that we find is best explained by female migration between communities. These genetic data illuminate the social organization of a late Neanderthal population at the easternmost extent of their known range.