In 2010, a group of archaeologists found the remains of a woman buried 19,000 years ago in the El Mirón cave (Cantabria). This grave caught the attention of experts because of its age, but also because the bones were covered in red paint and with accumulations of pollen that indicated that the grave had been decorated with flowers. It was then baptized as the red lady. These remains have served as a sample for a new study that sought to analyze the evolution of oral bacteria from the first hominids to modern humans. The work has discovered that there is an important difference between the set of microorganisms of the Europeans of the Upper Paleolithic (group to which the Red Lady belongs) and the humans who arrived on the continent 14,000 years ago. The bacteria of the former are very similar to those of Neanderthals, while those of the latter are more similar to those of modern man.
