Unique Method for Determining Whether a Population was Neandertal

"These methods open up new avenues of research throughout Late Pleistocene contexts in which hominin remains are scarce and where the biological nature of remains is unclear due to ancient DNA not being preserved. This represents a significant advance in palaeoproteomic phylogenetics and is of direct relevance to our understanding of hominin evolution."

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Professor Matthew Collins

Director of BioArCh at the University of York's Department of Archaeology and co-author of the paper

You may have been searching for palaeoproteomic phylogenetics all your life ... or not ... but it sounds cool no matter what it does.  Probably with no fewer syllables, it means the study of ancient proteins to deduce whatever is possible about the nature of a subject.  Genetic proteins are used for the study but the question they were asking is whether the people in this population pool were Neandertal.  (Science Daily:  Body ornamentation among Neanderthals: Dig in France confirmed as Neaderthal remains)

Here are the bits they were studying:

Châtelperronian body ornaments and bone points from the Grotte du Renne in Arcy-sur-Cure
Credit: © Marian Vanhaeren

Those objects are less than half an inch tall so finding them must have been unbelievably difficult.  At first they were regarded as too small to have much value but this research found they can add to the overall understanding as well and, thus, the judgment the population was Neandertal.

The interest isn't so much where Neandertals went or they didn't.  It's fascinating to see the ways scientists work to discover where they went or didn't.  First they collected all these tiny bits and then someone thought of trying to extract proteins from them and, step by step, they worked their way toward their conclusion.

Don't get too carried away with scientific method since the dig for this study is in the south of France / northern Spain so, unless I miss my guess, these are places you wouldn't mind going anyway