They discover through bones that Neanderthals suffered from and shared these infections with us

It seems that during the time we lived with this species, we were able to exchange more than just rituals or wisdom.

There was a time, perhaps along with some of the largest animals that have existed on Earth, that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in different locations on the planet. We don’t know for sure if some of the beneficial genetic mutations that some humans have come from thousands of years ago, but we do know that we have shared more than caves with a species very similar to us.

Neanderthals with very human infections

A group of researchers has published an article on the preprint server bioRxiv in which he describes how he was able locate genome of ancient viruses in DNA of copies of neanderthals who inhabited the Altai massif, located in Central Asiaoccupying the territories of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

The news it doesn’t work interesting from the point of view of possible infections, given that the virus fragments appear to be inert and cannot be transmitted, but rather it is for the viruses that have been found and that the modern human being also suffers in his own flesh. The Chagyrskaya cave It has been the place where the remains of Neanderthals were found in 2022, although the viruses found are not the oldest ever recorded.

Archival image of Chagyrskaya Cave

For this we would have to travel almost 300 million years go back in time and carefully read the article published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, which describes the research that discovered a viral infection in a group of vertebrates tetrapods known as amniotes.

But returning to the Neanderthals in the recent study, the team of researchers has searched for traces of viruses in the recovered DNA fragments and has achieved map three viruses during his investigations: adenoviruscapable of causing diseases such as conjunctivitis, hemorrhagic cystitis or gastroenteritis, herpesviridaeof possible sexual transmission, and the human papillomavirusalso sexually transmitted.

Marcelo Briones, main author of the preprint that we mentioned above, assures that ‘this DNA contains a mixture of various DNAfrom the Neanderthal individuals themselves along with bacteria, fungi and viruses that could have infected them.’ In statements to Gizmodo, Marcelo states that:

We have shown that the degree of such changes in the recovered viral genome reads are consistent with the age of the Neanderthal bones and, thus, show that they are not contaminants present today.

The possibility that the viruses had animal origin was ruled out. and it seems to have been shown that these could have infected early humans and been present in Neanderthals throughout their existence. The researcher from the Federal University of São Paulo assures that the modern humans they could have had ‘a increased resistance against infectious diseasescompared to Neanderthals’.

Furthermore, he also points out that ‘It is more likely that this human anatomically modern archaic infected Neanderthals than the opposite’. It seems that the transmission of viruses between those humans and the extinct species of the genus Homo was clear, as well as the mating between species, which could have led to his disappearance. Of course, with love experiences involved.

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