Neanderthals from 50,000 years ago have been found to carry three viruses that still affect humans today.
Brazil’s Federal University of Sao Paulo has been conducting research that has led to what is believed to be the oldest known remnants of viruses in humans. The new discovery shatters the old record by some 20,000 years, found in some 31,000-year-old baby teeth in Siberia, Epoch Times reports.
Speaking to The New Scientist, Marcelo Briones from the Federal University of São Paulo discussed the discovery of the skeletons of two males. Located in the Chagyrskaya cave in the Altai mountains of Russia, the were found with sequences that appeared to be viruses.
Those sequences were then compared with viral sequences found in humans today that are known to cause lifelong infection and were able to rule out that they had come from modern humans or predators. In other words, the viruses had to be ancient.
Further research discovered that they could be forms of modern viruses: adenovirus, herpesvirus, and papillomavirus. The study was published on bioRxiv on Tuesday (May 21) but is yet to undergo peer review.
Today, cold and flu-like symptoms like sore throats are caused by adenoviruses, while genital warts and various types of cancer can stem from papillomaviruses and herpesviruses can cause cold sores or chickenpox.
It was this herpesvirus that was found to most commonly resemble the type that people get infected with today.
These viruses, the researchers have suggested, may have contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals some 40,000 years ago.