DNA grants a glimpse of Neanderthal family life

his award a couple of weeks ago of a Nobel prize for his work on the of early human species, including Neanderthals, Svante Paabo (or, more accurately, he and a group of his acolytes) have just published in one of the biggest genetic studies yet of that species.These Neanderthals lived 50,000 years ago in the Altai mountains of Russia. The remains under study—17 bone and tooth samples belonging to 13 individuals—came from two caves about 100km apart. One, called Chagyrskaya, yielded 11 individuals (three boys, three girls, three men and two women). The other, Okladnikov, yielded two (a boy and a woman). Taken together, this work almost doubles the number of Neanderthal genomes that have been described. It also gives a tantalising glimpse into Neanderthal social lives.