El papel del ADN fósil en paleoantropología: Foxp2, neandertales y lenguaje

Abstract

Fossil DNA analysis may become an important source of evidence in Paleoanthropology, in the sense that it may throw light on the inconclusiveness of more traditional evidence that discipline is concerned with (fossil reconstructions, etc.). However, caution is in order: if paleogenetic evidence is not rightly understood, inferences brought to the fore from it could be as ambiguous as the more traditional body of evidence. Our paper makes the point that prudence is required when trying to draw inferences about behavior or cognition from the fossil DNA analysis. We illustrate such a point by discussing the recent discovery of the modern FOPX2 gene version in Neanderthals. Many paleoanthropologists have taken that discovery to be the definitive proof of the existence of complex language in that species. We will aim at showing that the aforementioned inference cannot be automatically established: it is based on a simplistic and reductionist view, which assumes, among many other aspects, that genes are simple causal agents, and that a direct link does exist between genes and characters.