Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, probably when early humans first began to migrate out of Africa, according to a genetic study released on Thursday.
People of European, Asian and Australasian origin all have Neanderthal DNA, but not Africans, researchers reported in yesterday’s issue of the journal Science.
The study may help resolve the long-running debate over whether Neanderthals and modern humans did more than simply live side by side in Europe and the Middle East.
“Those of us who live outside Africa carry a little Neanderthal DNA in us,” said Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, who led the study.
“The proportion of Neanderthal-inherited genetic material is about 1 to 4 percent. It is a small but very real proportion of ancestry in non-Africans today,” David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who worked on the study, told reporters in a telephone briefing.
While the findings may lead to jokes about cave-man behavior or looks, Paabo said his team cannot identify any Neanderthal “traits.”
“As far as we can tell these are just random pieces of DNA,” he said.
The researchers used modern methods called whole genome sequencing to examine the DNA from Neanderthal bones found in Croatia, Russia, Germany and Spain, including some crushed leg bones from one Croatian cave that some scientists believe are evidence of cannibalism.
The researchers developed new methods to gather, distinguish and sequence the Neanderthal DNA.
“In those bones that are 30,000, 40,000 years old there is of course very little DNA preserved,” Paabo said.
He said 97 percent or more of the DNA extracted was from bacteria and fungi.
They compared the Neanderthal sequences with DNA sequences from five people from Europe, Asia, Papua New Guinea and Africa.
“Their analysis shows the power of comparative genomics and brings new insights to our understanding of human evolution,” Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement.
The results add to a picture of modern humans living alongside with and interacting on the most intimate levels with similar humans who have now gone extinct.
“It certainly is an indication of what went on socially when Neanderthals and modern humans met,” Paabo said.
“There was interbreeding at some little level. I would prefer to leave it to others who want to quarrel over whether to call us separate species or not,” he said. “They were not genetically very distinct from us.”
The DNA sequences date back to somewhere around 80,000 years ago, when modern humans moving through the Middle East on their way out of Africa would have encountered Neanderthal populations.
The researchers identified five genes unique to Neanderthals, including three skin genes.
“This suggests that something in the physiology or morphology of the skin has changed in humans,” Paabo said.
In March Paabo and colleagues reported they had found a previously unknown human species that lived 30,000 years ago alongside modern humans and Neanderthals in Siberia.
Scientists have speculated that different species of humans lived side by side at various times over the past million years. But many would have lived in tropical zones where bones are not easily preserved.
Paabo said modern-day Africans may carry some of that unknown DNA even if they do not have Neanderthal ancestors.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver