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.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS