At a certain point in 1998, owners of land in what is now Lagar Velho, in the Lapedo valley, were excavating the site to make a construction. However, plans changed when they found the skeleton of a young boy.
It is estimated that the human being was about four years old and would have been buried about 29,000 years ago. What was most surprising was that the jaw appeared to be from a modern specimen, yet the corpse's proportions were that of a Neanderthal. Furthermore, his remains were largely intact.
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Scientists believe that the only explanation for this is that at some point neanderthals and modern men have reproduced. However, until that find at Lapedo, scholars believed this was impossible.
As they were thought to be different species, sexual acts between the two was unthinkable.
From this, they proposed two theories. The first is that this “relationship” was a “one night stand” thing. However, João Zilhao,
archaeologist and leader of the team responsible for the discovery, was skeptical of this hypothesis.According to him, if this was such a rare event, the chances of finding evidence after such a long time were practically impossible.
Another theory is that relationships between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were more frequent. The carbon dating carried out on the skeleton of Menino de Lapedo further corroborates this hypothesis.
“If so many millennia after contact time, people living in this part of the world still show anatomical evidence of this ancestral Neanderthal population, it must be because interbreeding didn't just happen once, it was the norm," he said. Zillion.
The Boy from Lapedo made researchers revise everything they understood about Neanderthals. From that moment on, they were no longer seen as a different species.
In addition, other fossils similar to that of the child were found later, according to information from the BBC. This further reinforced the theory of constant relationships between Neanderthals and modern humans.
Another piece of information that was made possible thanks to Lapedo's finding was that europeans and Asians have 4% Neanderthal DNA. Zillions explained:
“This does not mean that in each of us 2% or 4% are (Neanderthals). In fact, if you put together all the parts of the Neanderthal genome that still persist, that's almost 50% or 70% of what was specifically Neanderthal. Therefore, the Neanderthal genome persisted almost in its entirety.”
Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.
