Its DNA sequence indicates that this early European was more closely related to a much earlier species of human living in Siberia about 700,000 years ago than to the later Neanderthals of Europe who became extinct about 30,000 years ago.

“It really raises more questions than it answers,” said Svante Paabo, the director the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig where the ancient DNA was extracted from the thigh bone of a skeleton excavated from the cave site known as the “pit of bones” in Sierra de Atapuerca.

Neanderthals organized their caves around tasks, study says.

In a paper published recently in the Canadian Journal of Archeology, researchers examined artifacts recovered at Riparo Bombrini, in northwest Italy, and concluded that their dwelling was organized around such activities as butchering animals, shaping tools and building fires.