CURIOUS APRIL 2021

“Be the Brand Ambassador of Tribes India” and ‘Be a Friend of

Tribes India’ Contest Launched by TRIFED in Association with
Mygov.In
Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation Ltd (TRIFED), Ministry of Tribal Affairs,
Government of India has launched two interesting competitions, Be the Brand Ambassador of
Tribes India and Be a ‘Friend’ of TRIBES INDIA Contestin association with MyGov.in, the
citizen-government engagement platform.

These competitions have been launched with the sole objective of promoting tribal craft, culture and
lifestyle. Through these innovative contests, awareness about tribal heritage, arts, crafts can be
enhanced among the general public. With more knowledge and awareness about tribal heritage, it is
hoped that citizens will also contribute to overall tribal empowerment by purchasing more tribal
products.

“Be the Brand Ambassador of Tribes India” is inviting stories featuring any tribal product (s) from
customers across the country. The stories should highlight his/ her experience in using the product
and provide details of the product and the place/ shop from where it was purchased. The requirement
is that the stories are in the form of short videos ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. The tribal
products may include gents or ladies' apparel, jewellery, accessories, paintings, metal crafts, terracotta
& pottery, decorative items, food & organic items, cane & bamboo items, stationery, furniture, home
furnishings, cuisine, etc. Participants will have to share their stories in the form of a link to the video
uploaded on YouTube. The contest will be on till 14th May 2021. 50 entries will be selected
and awarded a Gift Voucher which will be valid at all Tribes India Showrooms and Tribesindia.com.
More details are found at https://www.mygov.in/task/be-brand-ambassador-tribes-india/
Following the success of its first Quiz contest on Indian culture which was organised in association
with MyGov in February, TRIFED has launched the second edition of the Quiz. Called “Be A Friend
of Tribes India”, the quiz went live on MyGov on April 2, 2021 and will be on till May 14, 2021. 50
winners of this quiz will be awarded a Tribes India Gift Voucher, valid on Tribesindia.com and all
Tribes India outlets. The quiz can be taken at: https://quiz.mygov.in/quiz/be-a-friend-of-tribes-india-
2021/
Tribes constitute over 8% of our population however, they are among the disadvantaged sections of
the society. An attitude that pervades among the mainstream is the erroneous belief that they have to
be taught and helped. However the truth is otherwise – the tribals have a lot of teach urban India.
Characterised by natural simplicity, their creations have a timeless appeal. The wide range of
handicrafts which include hand-woven cotton, silk fabrics, wool, metal craft, terracotta, bead-work,
all need to be preserved and promoted.
TRIFED, as the nodal agency under Ministry of Tribal Affairs, has been working to improve the
income and livelihoods of the tribal people, while preserving their way of life and traditions. It has
also put in place several initiatives to familiarise the people with the rich and diverse craft, culture of
the tribal communities across the country and to help the tribal population in the area of marketing
development of their rich products. These initiatives, launched in association with MyGov fall in line
with the Atmanirbhar Abhiyan, the PM’s vision of emphasising local products and promoting local
entrepreneurship.

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 CURIOUS APRIL 2021

Mum’s a Neanderthal, Dad’s a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-

human hybrid
Genetic analysis uncovers a direct descendant of two different groups of early
humans.

Denny inherited one set of chromosomes from her Neanderthal ancestors, depicted in this
model.Credit: Christopher Rynn/University of Dundee
A female who died around 90,000 years ago was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, according to
genome analysis of a bone discovered in a Siberian cave. This is the first time scientists have
identified an ancient individual whose parents belonged to distinct human groups. The findings
were published on 22 August in Nature1.

“To find a first-generation person of mixed ancestry from these groups is absolutely extraordinary,”
says population geneticist Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London. “It’s really
great science coupled with a little bit of luck.”

The team, led by palaeogeneticists Viviane Slon and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, conducted the genome analysis on a single bone
fragment recovered from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Russia. This cave lends its name
to the ‘Denisovans’, a group of extinct humans first identified on the basis of DNA sequences from
the tip of a finger bone discovered2 there in 2008. The Altai region, and the cave specifically, were
also home to Neanderthals

Given the patterns of genetic variation in ancient and modern humans, scientists already knew
that Denisovans and Neanderthals must have bred with each other — and with Homo sapiens (See
'Tangled Tree'). But no one had previously found the first-generation offspring from such pairings,
and Pääbo says that he questioned the data when his colleagues first shared them. “I thought they
must have screwed up something.” Before the discovery of the Neanderthal–Denisovan individual,
whom the team has affectionately named Denny, the best evidence for so close an association was
found in the DNA of a Homo sapiens specimen who had a Neanderthal ancestor within the previous
4–6 generations3.

Ancestry revealed
Pääbo’s team first uncovered Denny’s remains several years ago, by looking through a collection of
more than 2,000 unidentified bone fragments for signs of human proteins. In a 2016 paper4, they
used radiocarbon dating to determine that the bone belonged to a hominin who lived more than
50,000 years ago (the upper limit of the dating technique; subsequent genetic analysis has put the
specimen at around 90,000 years old, according to Pääbo). They then sequenced the specimen’s
mitochondrial DNA — the DNA found inside cells’ energy converters — and compared that data to
sequences from other ancient humans. This analysis showed that the specimen’s mitochondrial
DNA came from a Neanderthal.

But this was only half of the picture. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother and
represents just a single line of inheritance, leaving the identity of the father and the individual’s
broader ancestry unknown.

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 CURIOUS APRIL 2021

In the latest study, the team sought to get a clearer understanding of the specimen’s ancestry by
sequencing its genome and comparing the variation in its DNA to that of three other hominins — a
Neanderthal and a Denisovan, both found in Denisova Cave, and a modern-day human from Africa.
Around 40% of DNA fragments from the specimen matched Neanderthal DNA — but another 40%
matched the Denisovan. By sequencing the sex chromosomes, the researchers also determined that
the fragment came from a female, and the thickness of the bone suggested she was at least 13 years
old.

With equal amounts of Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA, the specimen seemed to have one parent
from each hominin group. But there was another possibility: Denny's parents could have belonged
to a population of Denisovan–Neanderthal hybrids.

A fascinating genome
To work out which of these options was more likely, the researchers examined sites in the genome
where Neanderthal and Denisovan genetics differ. At each of these locations, they compared
fragments of Denny's DNA to the genomes of the two ancient hominins. In more than 40% of cases,
one of the DNA fragments matched the Neanderthal genome, whereas the other matched that of a
Denisovan, suggesting that she had acquired one set of chromosomes from a Neanderthal and the
other from a Denisovan. That made it clear that Denny was the direct offspring of two distinct
humans, says Pääbo. “We’d almost caught these people in the act.”

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 CURIOUS APRIL 2021

The results convincingly demonstrate that the specimen is indeed a first-generation hybrid, says
Kelley Harris, a population geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle who has studied
hybridization between early humans and Neanderthals. Skoglund agrees: “It’s a really clear-cut
case,” he says. “I think it’s going to go into the textbooks right away.”

Harris says that sexual encounters between Neanderthals and Denisovans might have been
quite
common. “The number of pure Denisovan bones that have been found I can count on one
hand,”
she says — so the fact that a hybrid has already been discovered suggests that such offspring
could have been widespread. This raises another interesting question: if Neanderthals and
Denisovansmated frequently, why did the two hominin populations remain genetically
distinct for several hundred-thousand years? Harris suggests that Neanderthal–Denisovan
offspring could have been infertile or otherwise biologically unfit, preventing the two species
from merging.

Neanderthal-Denisovan pairings could also have had some advantages,even if there other
costs says Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
Neanderthals and Denisovans were less genetically diverse than modern humans, and so
interbreeding might have provided a way of “topping up” their genomes with a bit of extra genetic
variation, he says. The study also raises questions over how matings between different human
groups happened, says Stringer — for example, whether or not they were consensual. A more
detailed account of the gene flow between Neanderthals and Denisovans in the future might offer
hints into ancient human behaviour.

Missed connections
Pääbo agrees that Neanderthals and Denisovans would have readily bred with each other when they
met - but he thinks that those encounters were rare. Most Neanderthal remains have been found
across western Eurasia, whereas Denisovans have so far been discovered only in their eponymous
Siberian cave. Although the two groups’ home turf overlapped in the Altai Mountains and possibly
elsewhere, these areas would have been sparsely populated. “I think any Neanderthal that lived west
of the Urals would never ever meet a Denisovan in their life,” Pääbo says, referring to the mountain
range that slices through western Russia and Kazakhstan But sometimes, Neanderthal populations
might have travelled from western Eurasia to Siberia, or vice-versa. On the basis of the variation in
the specimen’s genome, the team deduced that Denny’s

Neanderthal mother was more closely related to a Neanderthal specimen found thousands of
kilometres away, in Croatia, than to another found less than 1 metre away in the same cave.

The Croatian Neanderthal died died much more recently than Denny — about 55,000 years ago —
while the Neanderthal from Denisova Cave is around 120,000 years old. That leaves two
possibilities to explain the ancestry of Denny's mother: either a population of European
Neanderthals came east to the Altai Mountains and partly replaced the region’s Neanderthals
before the hybrid was born, or a group of Neanderthals could have left the Altai Mountains
for Europe sometime after Denny’s birth. Either way, says Harris, Neanderthals “didn’t just
stay in one place for thousands of years”.

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 CURIOUS APRIL 2021

With a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father, what should we call the new specimen? “We
shy away a little from the word ‘hybrid’,” says Pääbo. The term implies that the two groups are
discrete species of human, whereas in reality the boundaries between them are blurry — as the new
study shows. Defining a species in the natural world is not always clear-cut, says Harris, and it’s
interesting to see long-running debates about how to categorize organisms start to be applied to
humans.

Whatever scientists decide to call Denny, Skoglund says he would have loved to be able to meet
her. “It’s probably the most fascinating person who’s ever had their genome sequenced.

VIJETHA IAS ACADEMY

ADDRESS: 7/50, II FLOOR, NEAR ROOP VATIKA, SHANKAR ROAD, OLD RAJENDAR NAGAR, NEW DELHI —
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