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. 2011 Jan 4;108(1):250-3.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011553108. Epub 2010 Dec 20.

Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior among Neandertal groups

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Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior among Neandertal groups

Carles Lalueza-Fox et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

The remains of 12 Neandertal individuals have been found at the El Sidrón site (Asturias, Spain), consisting of six adults, three adolescents, two juveniles, and one infant. Archaeological, paleontological, and geological evidence indicates that these individuals represent all or part of a contemporaneous social group of Neandertals, who died at around the same time and later were buried together as a result of a collapse of an underground karst. We sequenced phylogenetically informative positions of mtDNA hypervariable regions 1 and 2 from each of the remains. Our results show that the 12 individuals stem from three different maternal lineages, accounting for seven, four, and one individual(s), respectively. Using a Y-chromosome assay to confirm the morphological determination of sex for each individual, we found that, although the three adult males carried the same mtDNA lineage, each of the three adult females carried different mtDNA lineages. These findings provide evidence to indicate that Neandertal groups not only were small and characterized by low genetic diversity but also were likely to have practiced patrilocal mating behavior.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Distribution of pairwise nucleotide differences among modern Europeans. Pairwise nucleotide differences were calculated from 10,000 iterations of 12 sequences randomly extracted without replacement from a HVR1 and HVR2 mtDNA European dataset. The value obtained for the 12 El Sidrón individuals (1.23) falls outside the current pairwise distribution.

Comment in

  • Inconclusive evidence for patrilocality in Neandertals.
    Vigilant L, Langergraber KE. Vigilant L, et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 May 3;108(18):E87; author reply E88. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1100100108. Epub 2011 Apr 8. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011. PMID: 21478435 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

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