The most archaic human groups weren’t crazy, but modern humans are, because it’s crazy to cross an ocean without knowing what’s on the other side. Or go to the moon, or to Mars, because we don’t stop.”
In October 2019, the new Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Svante Pääbo, spoke in Lisbon about his research into ancient DNA and the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. Analyzes that 50,000 to 80,000 years ago revealed a cross between modern humans and Neanderthals, likely in the Middle East, which may have produced offspring.
At the time, the man who became the pioneer of paleogenetics promoted the book The Neanderthal Man — In Search of Lost Genomes, in which he talked about his researches and discoveries. A work that showed that Neanderthals left a genetic trail in Europeans, Asians and their descendants, but not in Africans.
Three years later, Svante Pääbo was drinking “his last sip of tea” when he received a call from Thomas Perlmann, the secretary of the Nobel Committee, informing him that he had been awarded the prize, which also included a cash prize of 900,000. dollars (917 thousand euros).
In statements from the Nobel Foundation, the Swedish scientist added that he never thought his discoveries would “make him worthy of a Nobel Prize”.
The justification for this choice was in the statement it released: “By revealing the genetic differences that distinguish all humans from extinct hominins, their findings provide the basis for exploring what makes us unique.”
The sequencing of a bone discovered in Siberia in 2008 revealed the existence of another and previously unknown hominin – it became known as Denisova and lived in the area of present-day Russia and Asia. A year later, Pääbo found that 2% of the genes passed from these extinct hominins to Homo sapiens about 70,000 years ago. This age-old flow of genes to today’s humans has physiological relevance today, for example for the way our immune system responds to infections.
“A great scientist and a great human being”
Commenting on the award of the Nobel, Carlos Fiolhais (also director of the scientific collection at Gradiva) emphasized that “Svante Pääbo is not only a great scientist – stubborn in the search for our origin – but also a great person, who Coimbra became interested in Joanina Library, in the tour I took of it, and in general the history of science in Portugal”.
Born in Stockholm on April 20, 1955, Svante Pääbo is the son of Sune Bergstrom, a Swedish biochemist who also won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1982, but whom he almost never had contact with because he was born of an extramarital affair with his father — a divorce that leads him to use his mother’s last name.
The new Nobel laureate lives in Leipzig (Germany) and immediately received congratulations from the Max-Planck Institute, where he works, which praised a work “which revolutionized our understanding of the historical development of modern man”.
Returning to the DN interview in October 2019, Pääbo said he was amazed at how Neanderthals mixed with modern humans and that his group’s findings were “aided” by technology. He then also left a certainty: he would not write any more books. “This book has actually been very well received and has been translated into 16 languages. So it was fun, it went well, but I won’t repeat it. I wrote everything I had to say in it.”
Neanderthal – In Search of Lost Genomes
Author: Svante Pääbo
Publisher: Gradiva
432 pages
Today will be known the Nobel Prize in Physics.
with agencies
Source: DN
