Italian scientists from the University of Florence learned about the appearance of a child who lived 17 thousand years ago in the Grotta delle Mura cave in the south of the Apennine Peninsula. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature Communications (NatComms).
Analysis of the remains from the cave tomb showed that the skeleton belonged to a boy who died at the age of one year and four months.
DNA analysis showed that the child had mutations in two genes involved in the production of heart muscle proteins (TNNT2 and MYBPC3). Such mutations often lead to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic disease in which the walls of the left ventricle thicken and stiffen over time.
As a result, the heart cannot receive or pump enough blood during contraction. Experts stated that this was probably the reason for such a short life.
The boy was genetically related to a group of Ice Age hunter-gatherers who were descended from an ancestral group called the Villabruna cluster.
Scientists also found that the child had blue eyes, dark skin and dark curly hair.
Researchers think that the congenital health problems of the baby, whose parents were understood to be first cousins, may have been caused by incest.
Previous scientists decrypted The oldest human DNA in South Africa.