Upper Palaeolithics had way to avoid in-breeding: Study

JAIPUR: A new study published in the journal ‘Science’ suggests that humans from at least 34,000 years ago were aware of the problems of in-breeding and formed groups to carefully avoid it.
News website ‘Science Daily’ reported that the study, published online on October 5, used genetic information from “anatomically modern humans who lived during the Upper Palaeolithic, a period when modern humans from Africa first colonized western Eurasia.”
The study found that partners from beyond the immediate family were deliberately sought out.The Upper Palaeolithic people also were “probably connected to a wider network of groups from within which mates were chosen,” the study found. Researchers sequenced genomes of four individuals from Sunghir, a famous Upper Palaeolithic site in Russia, believed to have been inhabited about 34,000 years ago, Science Daily said.
Human fossils recovered from Sunghir were of people who lived at the same time and were buried together. “To the researchers’ surprise, however, these individuals were not closely related in genetic terms; at the very most, they were second cousins. This is true even in the case of two children who were buried head-to-head in the same grave,” the science news website said.
“The symbolism, complexity and time invested in the objects and jewellery found buried with the remains also suggests that it is possible that they developed rules, ceremonies and rituals to accompany the exchange of mates between groups, which perhaps foreshadowed modern marriage ceremonies, and may have been similar to those still practiced by hunter-gatherer communities in parts of the world today, Science Daily reported. The international team of academics who conducted this study was led by University of Cambridge, UK, and University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
The study’s authors surmise that the early development of complex mating systems may explain why anatomically modern humans proved successful while other species, such as Neanderthals, did not. This, however, cannot be conclusively established until more ancient genomic information is available to test it.
Professor Eske Willerslev, who works at both St John’s College, Cambridge and at the University of Copenhagen, and is senior author on the study, said there might also be a possible link with the unusual sophistication of ornaments and cultural objects found at Sunghir. Group-specific cultural expressions may have been used to establish distinctions between bands of early humans, providing a means of identifying who to mate with and who to avoid as partners.
“The ornamentation is incredible and there is no evidence of anything like that with Neanderthals and other archaic humans,” Willerslev is quoted by Science Daily as saying.