Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals

It has been shown that Neanderthals contributed genetically to modern humans outside Africa 47,000-65,000 years ago.

Here a team of archaeogeneticists analyse the genomes of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan from the Altai Mountains in Siberia together with the sequences of chromosome 21 of two Neanderthals from Spain and Croatia. 

They find that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains roughly 100,000 years ago. By contrast, they did not not detect such a genetic contribution in the Denisovan or the two European Neanderthals. The team conclude that in addition to later interbreeding events, the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains and early modern humans met and interbred, possibly in the Near East, many thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals

Martin Kuhlwilm, Ilan Gronau, Melissa J. Hubisz, Cesare de Filippo, Javier Prado-Martinez, Martin Kircher, Qiaomei Fu, Hernán A. Burbano, Carles Lalueza-Fox, Marco de la Rasilla, Antonio Rosas, Pavao Rudan, Dejana Brajkovic, Željko Kucan, Ivan Gušic, Tomas Marques-Bonet, Aida M. Andrés, Bence Viola, Svante Pääbo, Matthias Meyer, Adam Siepel & Sergi Castellano

Journal: Nature

DOI:10.1038/nature16544

---