A draft of your family tree
In 2010, the journal Science published the first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, and the main ingredients came from this cave. An international team led by geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology used powder drilled from three small bone fragments found here—Vi33.16, Vi33.25, and Vi33.26—to map the genetic code of Homo neanderthalensis. The results confirmed what some anthropologists had long suspected: modern non-African humans inherited between 1% and 4% of their DNA from Neanderthals. This was the first definitive genetic proof of interbreeding between the two human species.
The exceptional preservation of the ancient DNA, then estimated to be around 44,000 years old, is attributed to the cave's stable and cool temperatures. In 2017, a much more complete, high-coverage genome was sequenced from another fragment from the cave, Vindija 33.19, belonging to a female Neanderthal who lived about 52,000 years ago. This more detailed sequence allows scientists to identify specific Neanderthal-derived alleles in modern human populations, linking them to traits like lipid metabolism, cholesterol levels, and even schizophrenia. The data from Vindija 33.19 also suggested that Neanderthal populations were small and isolated.