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still hope one day to find just one person with Neanderthal DNA. It is a vanishing hope as more
and more DNA is tested from around the world. But could I recognize it if I found it, whether
around Tregaron or Cardiff, or London or California? The answer is definitely yes – so long as it is
mitochondrial DNA.
I had once attempted, but failed, to recover Neanderthal DNA from the Tabun skull from the
Natural History Museum in London. The Tabun skull was dated to 100,000 years ago and the teeth
looked in fairly good shape. But when I tried to drill into a molar tooth, it was rock hard and I was
terrified it would fracture. I did get a little dentine powder from the inside, but I did not smell the
reassuring scent of burning flesh, the smell that meant success. However, I did manage to recover a
few molecules of DNA from the Tabun tooth. When I put them through the DNA analyser, the
mDNA sequences looked distinctly modern, with their closest matches in Israel, where the skull
had been excavated. The big debate at the time, in the early 1990s, was whether Neanderthals were
an extinct species of human, in which case their DNA should be very different from ours, or
whether they were just a phase in the evolution of modern humans, in which case the DNA should
be reasonably similar. I never felt confident enough about proclaiming that the modern-looking
DNA that I had recovered from the Tabun skull was really from the skull, rather than from the
archaeologists and museum curators who had handled it over the fifty years since it was excavated.
I am glad I was cautious, because two years later what did appear to be genuinely ancient DNA
was recovered from the Neanderthal-type specimen, the original one that had been found in the
Neander Valley in Germany (Tal is valley in German) in 1863. This DNA was very different from
any modern DNA. It had 27 mutations in comparison to the mitochondrial reference sequence,
while even the most distinct modern DNA only varies from the reference by 12 changes. When
similar DNA was found in two further Neanderthal remains, from Croatia and the Caucasus
mountains, it provided reasonable proof that Neanderthals were indeed an extinct species of
human. The last Neanderthal died in southern Spain about 27,000 years ago; at least that is where
the most recently dated remains have been found. But that was before the world knew about the
Tregaron twins!
The brothers had passed away in the 1980s, so another trip up the track into the hills would be
pointless. Since they were men, and bachelors at that, their mitochondrial DNA could not have
been passed on to their children, even if they had any. And neither the man at the Talbot Inn, nor
anyone else I spoke to in Tregaron, knew where the brothers had come from, so I could not track
down a relative. The only chance was that, among the smiling children at the local school, there
was one who, through maternal connections, would carry the tell-tale Neanderthal DNA. There
was a lot to look out for in Wales.
Examining first the matrilineal DNA from Wales, the living record of the journeys of women to
this part of the Isles, the pattern of maternal clans is very similar to Ireland, and to what we have
also seen in the two Pictland regions of Scotland, Tayside and Grampian. The clan of Helena
predominates, as always, with 47 per cent of people in both regions belonging to that clan. When
Ireland is compared to the whole of Wales, this close similarity extends to the other clans as well.
When I divided Wales into three regions, north, mid- and south Wales, a few differences did
emerge, mostly ones that showed a closer genetic link between north and mid-Wales than either did
to the south of the country. But the overall pattern was one of continuity with Ireland and, to a
lesser extent, with the Pictland regions of Scotland. But, unfortunately, there was no sign of any