Many of us are (at least partially) Neanderthals

[guy]

More people are doing home DNA genetic testing. Sometimes the results have been surprising. Interestingly, several people have told me they have a small percentage Neanderthal DNA. Although I initially thought that this finding was an error, I am now convinced that it was correct:

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 The percentage of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is zero or close to zero in people from African populations and is about 1 to 2 percent in people of European or Asian background. The percentage of Denisovan DNA is highest in the Melanesian population (4 to 6 percent), lower in other Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander populations, and very low or undetectable elsewhere in the world.

I had to investigate this further.

 

 

Modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans all shared a common ancestor called Homo heidelbergensis.

Between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago, one group of Homo heidelbergensis left Africa. They expanded into Eurasia and then split: Those that moved west into Europe evolved into Neanderthals. The ones that moved east into Asia became Denisovans.

The human ancestors that remained in Africa evolved into our own species—Homo sapiens.

And it appears that humans were shagging both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

 

It shouldn't be surprising how close in appearance the Neanderthals were with humans:

 

 

 

 

 

It appears that humans are more diverse than first appreciated. Below is a good lecture on these relationships among Neanderthals, Denisovans, and humans.

 

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/dtcgenetictesting/neanderthaldna/

 

 

Edited May 18, 2022 by guy

[guy]

A key scientific breakthrough came with the discovery of this tiny bone. It belonged to a 13-year-old girl whose mother was Denisovan and whose father was a Neanderthal. This has strongly shown that different human species mated with each other and produced offspring when they had the opportunity. Credit: University of Vienna

This article is a nice follow-up on this topic:

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Using the latest scientific methods, Tom Higham and Katerina Douka from the University of Vienna want to solve a great mystery of human evolution:

It is likely that there were at least eight different species of humans on Earth (perhaps even more) between 150,000–30,000 years ago—and they sometimes exchanged genetic material through inter-breeding. "Today is a very unusual time in terms of human evolution." Tom Higham explains, "For several million years, we shared the planet with different groups of hominins related to us and now it is just us, as well as our great ape cousins."

Scientists did not believe that the species did coexist or even met one another." This situation profoundly changed in 2010 with the publication of the Neanderthal genome, which showed that living people shared some of their DNA. Humans had indeed interbred with Neanderthals.

 

 

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-molecular-archaeology-ancient-genes.html

Edited June 6, 2022 by guy