Why Neanderthals may be lower in your family tree than you thought
Genetic analysis of a 40,000-year-old jawbone found in a Romania suggests that early humans and Neanderthals intermingled more recently than previously thought.
DNA taken from a 40,000-year-old modern human jawbone from the cave Pe葯tera cu Oase in Romania reveals that this man had a Neandertal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back.
Svante P盲盲bo/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Modern humans and Neanderthals may have interbred more recently than聽we previously thought.
Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern humans belong, appear to have interbred with Neanderthals around 40,000 years ago, according to analysis of a jawbone found in a Romanian cave system. Anthropologists had previously found evidence that early humans had interbred with Neanderthals some 55,000 years ago, most likely in the Middle East. This new find is the first evidence to suggest that interbreeding may have taken place in Europe as well.
An international team of researchers has published an analysis of ancient genetic material extracted from the bone, which belonged to an early Homo sapiens settler in Europe. The results, detailed in the scientific journal , found that six to nine percent of the individual鈥檚 genome is from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date. Present-day Europeans have between 2 and 4 percent in their genome.
Since DNA can progressively break down and become diluted with in each successive generation, the size of the Neanderthal presence in the genome suggests that the interbreeding between the two species of ancient man occurred just a few generations before the individual was born.
David Reich, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the paper, said the find was 鈥渁n incredibly unexpected thing.鈥�
鈥淚n the last few years, we鈥檝e documented interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans, but we never thought we鈥檇 be so lucky to find someone so close to that [interbreeding] event,鈥� he said in with the BBC.
The finding supports previous research and analysis showing that modern humans probably interbred with Neanderthals shortly after leaving their African homeland. Analysis of ancient remains from sites across Europe suggest the two species co-existed for roughly 聽鈥� hunting the same animals, and possibly even exchanging ideas and culture 鈥� before the Neanderthals went extinct around 40,000 years ago.
It had previously been believed that the spread of Homo sapiens had been responsible for the decline of Neanderthals, either through warfare or the transmission of diseases. But these recent discoveries suggest there may have been other factors, including a very cold period that hit Europe around 40,000 years ago.
The individual may not be a direct descendent of modern Europeans, however. The remains from the Pe葯tera cu Oase cave system in Romania 鈥� first discovered 聽鈥� suggest that the individual had more in common genetically to modern East Asians and Native Americans, not today鈥檚 Europeans.
Dr. Reich said this suggests the individual was part of an earlier settlement of modern humans in Europe.
鈥淭his sample ... doesn鈥檛 yet look like Europeans today,鈥� he told the BBC. 鈥淭here may have been a pioneering group of modern humans that got to Europe, but was later replaced by other groups.鈥�