Mysterious twists are revealed in the legend of human Neanderthal mixed children
After four failed attempts, scientists finally dated the skeleton of the human Niadite hybrid discovered in Portugal more than 20 years ago.
The famous and mysterious Lapedo child lived and died less than 30,000 years ago, a discovery shed light on their funerals and human relationships.
A few years before scientists sequenced the complete Neanderthal genome, this skeleton was a big clue for our ancestors to mating and mixing with their closest human relatives.
this Discover lapedo kids In 1998, the story of “Human Inside Out” hints at a long and secret love.
Scientists have discovered uncertain sexual skeletons in an ancient rock shelter in Portugal. It was soon known for its Neanderthal and human traits “mosaic” – launching the fierce ones”Academic Crazy“Whether it is a hybrid.
Images of bones, animal bones and traces during excavation in 1998. (João Zilhão/Cidália Duarte)
Now, many years after the discovery of the child, some researchers who discovered the child for the first time confirmed that this strange-looking human has lived for tens of thousands of years back Neanderthals are extinct.
If some scientists think that if Leapateo bones are indeed a hybrid, it shows how strong Neanderthal genes might be influx into the human lineage. Neanderthals have always existed in more than 10,000 years of human descent.
Although the remains of Lapateo children do not produce direct DNA to confirm the shared Neanderthal-human lineage, the appearance and age of the bones open up the possibility.
Oxford University lead author Bethan Linscott told the Associated Press in an email.
At the time of discovery, in December 1998, a rock shelter in the northwest was outlined. (João Zilhão)
Today, the interweaving of Neanderthals and human ancestors is no longer a radical idea. Actually, wE knows that Neanderthals and humans have a lot of things throughout Eurasia. sThanks to genetic testing, people in Ohio even found out about the percentage they can attribute to Neanderthals, which can sometimes reach 4% of the variability region between our species.
There have been four previous attempts to date Lapedo Child’s bones since 1998, all of which have been unsuccessful due to degradation of the remains and carbon pollution.
Finally, modern advances make this feat possible, and date scientists have proposed some ways we look at children’s burial.
A team of international researchers used the right radius sample of the skeleton to measure the radiocarbon decay rate of the main component of collagen, a technique for special downgrades. This allowed them to identify bones between 27,780 and 28,550 years.
Neanderthals became extinct about 40,000 years ago.
Lapedo child’s right radius. (Linscott et al., Science Advances2025)
Like the pelvis of a red deer, some animals buried near children have much larger bones than humans, suggesting that they were not killed as part of a funeral, as some researchers once proposed, but may be used to create the “structure” of burial.
Even charcoal found at burial sites is at least 150 years older than the child, according to new dating research. This refutes the idea that the ritual burns during burial.
The skeleton of the ocher is stained by the ocher, which may be due to the stained “shrub” being buried in the remains. Buried in the body. The bones of rabbits, including those on the legs, were also dyed red around the children, indicating that they were deliberately using them as part of their burial. The date of rabbit bones is roughly consistent with this explanation.
Lapedo may be the first early human hybrid proposed by scientists, but the individual is not the last.
In 2012, scientists working in Russia dug out the bones of a human about 13 years old, according to her DNA, which was the result of a Neanderthal mother and a father like Denisso. “Danny” is the only known first-generation hybrid human.
In 2015, genetic studies on Romanian fossils discovered an ancient man who looked similar to a latapedo child, which contained up to 11% of autosomal Neanderthal DNA, suggesting some of the chaotic interspecies of the past.
Advances in DNA recovery may one day lead scientists to make similar estimates of children with Lapedo.
The study was published in Science Advances.
