More than 50,000 years ago, life was not going well for the Neanderthal who later became known in the scientific community as "Chagyrskaya D." He was living with relatives, including his adolescent daughter, in a cave in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia.
Food was scarce, and to add to his problems, Chagyrskaya D had several infectious diseases. He may have been dealing with skin lesions, a persistent sore throat, and digestive issues.
Scientists are using DNA testing to learn what ailed Chagyrskaya D and other Neanderthals. These new insights are telling scientists more about how Homo neanderthalensis lived and whether interactions with Homo sapiens led to their eventual extinction.
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In a 2022 article in Nature, a team of scientists revealed their DNA analysis of the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals. The Neanderthal group consisted of six adults and five children. Many of them were close relatives, including Chagyrskaya D and his teenage daughter, Chagyrskaya H.
Given that the Neanderthals lived at the same time and were related, scientists have suggested they may have been a family who died around the same time as each other. Starvation from a poor hunting season was one possible cause for their demise.
In a 2024 study in Viruses, another research team used DNA analysis to identify the viruses lurking in the remains of the Chagyrskaya 11.
Their analysis found the presence of three viruses. The first, herpesvirus, includes the herpes simplex virus (known to cause lesions), varicella-zoster virus (responsible for chicken pox and shingles), and Epstein-Barr virus (the source of an infectious mononucleosis).
Papillomaviruses were the second family of viruses discovered. They cause human papillomavirus (HPV), which can later lead to cervical and other types of cancer.
Lastly, the scientists found adenoviruses that cause ongoing respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. These viruses can persistently infect parts of the throat, including the adenoids and tonsils.
Although the other Neanderthal remains also contained DNA from these pathogens, Chagyrskaya D was the only one to have all three. The diseases may have been latent, or he may have endured years with a chronic sore throat and painful lesions.
In addition to the pathogens identified from the DNA analysis, scientists have also found that the Neanderthals had to put up with the coronavirus, according to a study in the Iran Journal of Public Health.
From shingles to coronaviruses, these pathogens are also known to modern humans. Ancient interactions between humans and Neanderthals have helped people develop an evolutionary response.
Early humans lived alongside Neanderthals for more than 200,000 years, though they did not encounter each other until about 50,000 years ago. And when they did meet up, as a study in Cell so delicately put it, they "exchanged genes."
They also shared new pathogens. Neanderthals didn't have previous exposure to these viruses, and they also didn't have as robust an immune system as early humans.
"Our ancestors evolved in tropical Africa, where more of the sun's energy reaches the ground. More vegetation grows, more animals live on the vegetation, and more pathogens live on the animals. Therefore, more pathogens jumped the species barrier from animals to humans, and Homo sapiens would have carried more and more deadly infectious diseases than Neanderthals," says Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History and a faculty member at Queen Mary, University of London, in the Centre for Public Health and Policy.
With lesser immune systems and exposure to new diseases, interactions with humans may have contributed to the Neanderthals' extinction, according to Kennedy.
But those interactions appeared to have been beneficial for humans. Those "gene exchanges" led to the development of a DNA adaptation that helped humans learn to manage RNA viruses.
"The Neanderthal gene variants that most frequently retained by modern humans are those which code for proteins that interact with RNA viruses, particularly HIV and flu. These gene variants were first acquired about 50,000 years ago," Kennedy says.
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