The Lagar Velho 1 Skeleton

In April 1999, the discovery of a human skeleton from Lagar Velho in Portugal was announced in the media, followed by a scientific paper a couple of months later (Duarte et al. 1999). The skeleton is of a young boy, about 4 years in age, who was deliberately buried about 24,500 years ago.

According to the paper's authors, which included Neandertal expert Erik Trinkaus, the skeleton contains a mixture of features from both modern humans and Neandertals, and is best explained as being a hybrid. And because it is dated to be at least 4,000 years more recent than the last known Neandertals, they consider it to be not the result of a direct interbreeding, but the descendant of a hybrid population which persisted for thousands of years. If true, this would strongly support the claim that Neandertals should be considered a subspecies of modern humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), rather than a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis.

The issue of Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA in which the paper was published also contained a commentary on it by Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz (1999). These authors, who consider Neandertals to be a separate species, disputed the original interpretation and claimed the skeleton merely belonged to a "chunky" modern human child.

This disagreement turned into a heated debate.

The Tattersall and Schwartz commentary was not appreciated by the original authors, two of whom, Erik Trinkaus and João Zilhão, wrote a strongly worded rebuttal letter.

In return, Ian Tattersall has written a short letter responding to the accusations in the Trinkaus/Zilhão letter.

References

Duarte C., Mauricio J., Pettitt P.B., Souto P., Trinkaus E., van der Plicht H. et al. (1999): The early upper Paleolithic human skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and modern human emergence in Iberia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 96:7604-9.

Tattersall I. and Schwartz J.H. (1999): Hominids and hybrids: the place of Neanderthals in human evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 96:7117-9.

Trinkaus E. and Zilhão J. (1999): A Correction to the Commentary of Tattersall and Schwartz Concerning the Interpretation of the Lagar Velho 1 Child

Links

Frequently Asked Questions Regarding the Lagar Velho 1 Human Skeleton

Fate of the Neandertals, from Archaeology

The Lagar Velho Child and the Fate of the Neanderthals, by João Zilhão

Erik Trinkaus' page on the Lagar Velho skeleton


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