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Fire is a very useful thing to control. It allows you to make the most of the food you have available, rid your food of disease, and stay warm and safe from unwanted predators. But fire also has some disadvantages: in addition to the risk of uncontrolled fires, smoke can also be toxic and dangerous if inhaled.
Some researchers have speculated that resistance to smoking (and other toxins) is one of the traits that helped humans survive when Neanderthals didn’t. But a new study claims otherwise.
We have long known that Neanderthals are not the brutes they were once considered to be. They were as sophisticated, resilient and creative as humans were, yet there are no Neanderthals around today, so they must have been weaker in some ways. In 2016, a study suggested that the toxins may have been Neanderthal’s Achilles heel. A group of American scientists studied a receptor protein and found that Neanderthals are up to a thousand times more sensitive than humans, and this may have led to their downfall. But in the same year another study came out that concluded the exact opposite.
The other group, which included archeology professor Wil Roebroeks and molecular biologist / toxicologist Jac Aarts, found that Neanderthals had more genetic variants that neutralized the damaging effect than modern humans, suggesting greater protection against toxins.
Understandably, Aarts and Roebroeks were perplexed. After all, here are two seemingly compelling studies that concluded opposite things. So they wanted to understand what was going on and teamed up with North American researchers for a new study.
They used human cells rather than rat cells from previous studies and were able to confirm their earlier results. The “dose-response curves of Neanderthals and modern humans almost coincide,” the researchers note, suggesting that Neanderthals were as resistant to smoke and toxins as humans, although they admit that this puts their results. ” strongly in contrast “with other studies.
Instead, the study suggests, it’s modern humans who may be the anomaly – detox proteins are more dominant in ancient hominins, chimpanzees, and gorillas than in modern humans.
The prehistoric use of fire is a crucial aspect of understanding these ancient cultures. The study is also significant and current in light of recent events, such as the fires in Australia earlier this year. We still have a lot to learn about how these proteins work in the human body, but understanding how they work in Neanderthals can also help us understand our bodies better.
Journal Reference: Jac MMJG Aarts et al. Evolution of detoxification from hominins: Neanderthal and modern man Ah receptor respond similarly to TCDD, Molecular biology and evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1093 / molbev / msaa287
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