1-4% of eurasians carry Neanderthal genomes

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New evidence shows that 1-4% of Eurasians carry Neanderthal genomes.

This overturns earlier results(as recent as 2009) suggesting that interbreeding did not take place.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm

Not junk DNA topic

But 1%-4% seems so small. What impact could it have?

Mor than a year ago, there were some posters here pursuing a link between Neanderthals and Autism. This may mean there are no "pure races" (good!), as there are many here who are of African descent and autistic, and according to the research, the Neanderthal DNA did not enter the Homos Sapiens genome until after most of the humans from which we are descended left Africa. More research needed.

Good article, Fuzzy.

under the Multi Regional view, the north was populated when early moderns came out of Africa, and Neanderthal were just one of the lines they mixed with.

The article lacks detail, and 1%-4% is a huge range, millions of people. The Han Chinese?

So while some DNA can be shown to match Neanderthal, all out of Africa break into 22 Haplogroups.

The question is, can we find a Pure Modern Human?

Besides the northern versions, Erectus has only one physical feature that defines them, round incisors, where Sapiens have concave, shovel shaped. Native Americans had fully round, and were early people in Asia. Modern humans also bred south, for Africa is full of them.

There are no humans, they are a collection of sub species who are all diverging.

1% to 4% would acount for Autism. rdos was right about Neanderthals all along.

Not necessarily and so far as this research is concerned, very probably not.


Note the absence of Neanderthalic contribution to African populations. Autism occurs amongst African populations, but Neanderthalic genes apparently do not...this substantially undermines any notion of Autism being caused by Neanderthalic genes.

Further if your interpretation were correct, the researchers chose to test the genomes of a group that contained 1-4% Autistic people and yet completely failed to notice that 100% of these subjects made up 100% of the subjects with Neanderthalic ancestry. That strikes me as somewhat unlikely. I have heard of absent minded professors but to overlook such an astounding result, they would have to be more like vegetative minded...

You are right about the BBC article being vague. My first reading I interpreted that the genome of Eurasians was 1-4% Neanderthalic, whereas you seem to interpret that 1-4% of Eurasians have Neanderthalic contributions in their genomes. I have just re-read the article and it's not entirely clear which is the correct interpretation.

Interesting, Fuzzy.

I agree that the wording is somewhat vague.

But perhaps it would be unprofessional to point fingers and say that 4% is in the Han Chinese population(just as an example). It would mark them as being somehow less human in certain peoples eyes.

And such a group would protest too. If you suggested that Scientist were a Neanderthal based on her DNA, she might say "No way! I'm too smart and too cute to be half ape!".

But a truly homogeneous 4% seems unlikely too, as that breaks earlier finds that Neanderthal DNA was not found in the general population. Rather the suggestion - as I read it - is that the 1-4% that feature Neanderthal DNA were not part of the test sample in earlier tests. That is, the population sample group wasnt comprehensive enough.

Actually, between 1 and 4% of the Eurasian genome is of Neanderthal origin, as in most or all individuals carry some Neanderthal genome. Which is completely different from 1-4% of people being Neanderthals.

But that is the overlap between 3 Neanderthal samples and 5 modern human samples, so it carries no information about the distribution of Neanderthal genome or characteristics in modern humans.

Seriously though, the idea of Neanderthal genes remaining hermetically sealed in a little DNA capsule and popping out in unrelated autistic people is hilarious.

Agreed.

However there are breeding groups which until recently were largely closed to outside DNA. Ethnic genetic diseases are good indicators of this.

That was my first interpretation, but I was led to second guess it when I read inventor's interpretation and could not confirm which was correct by re-reading the BBC article. It certainly makes a lot more sense for the DNA to be diffused throughout a population rather than concentrated at high levels in a small minority.


I would have expected that those taking up the line of reasoning where Autism=Neanderthal would believe that maybe 4% of people have some such genetic material and that Autism occurs in 1% of the population due to a high loading (inheriting such material from both parents). It still strikes me as absurd but seems a more charitible interpretation of such beliefs than DNA capsules.

The alternate is that that 1-4% is found in some small portion of humanity, with each individual containing less than that. Not everyone has a little(that can be measured), but the totals add up to 1-4% of human gene space.

npr's sience friday this week said something diff. they said they found simmularitys in human and neanderthals genomes and that 45000-60000yrs. ago there was inner breeding and that the facts at this time is argueably that neandthals are human!!

that is in all nonafrican genomes, it seems after we left africa we started innerbreeding in asia,eroupe,ect.

This article is much better phrased.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... umans.html

The original article is open access at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/710 and there is some editorial in the same edition of Science at http://www.sciencemag.org/special/neandertal/

Thank you StuartN for the original.

With 1%-4% from a few random Europeans, it shows how common, yet only a few subjects.

It is a lot, for the groups were one in Africa only 250,000 years before, the testing was for after that, and according to The Human Genome Project, almost all of Europe comes from one very closely related group of less than one hundred, under 40,000 years ago.

The only thing that could be tested for is divergence after the split, which shows high for Africa, south Asia, and low for northern people.

In only 250,000 years I would be suprised to find more than 4% differance. One line, split, then mixed 250,000 years later.

While modern humans have been around for 125,000 years, which could have overlapped the Neanderthal presence in the middle east, humans were not much. One point this story brings out is no Neanderthal after 50,000 years in the mid east, which is also when humans developed the halfted axe, and thrown spear.

After 40,000 years ago when the ancestors of Europe went north, and suddenly grew larger heads, brains, is the most likely time for a more friendly relations. As the mtDNA does not change, it was human females, who produced hybrid children, with bigger heads, brains, strong bodiies, who in a few generations would become the male line.

Due to the wall of ice to the north, during most of the time, migration would be east west, and since the Han Chinese are the same, coming after the Ch'en, who come long after the Neanderthal are gone, they got it from the people in western China, who had the same cultural complex as Europe, domestic grain and herds, weaving, pottery, metals, which come into China as a group in the upper Yellow River some 8,000 years ago. Their mummies go back 13,000 years.

So one father line across the north, and that Neanderthal.

4% can be all, for it is the differance as compared to Africa. It is no differance compared with China.

Northern Europe and Northern China did have a different pattern of development than the rest of the world. The son of a Neanderthal and a Human woman, will carry his father's DNA from then on. It points to a replacement of the human male line in the north.

25,000 years later, that same line is bred into China. The Ch'en swept downriver with the new ways, formed the first empire, and after a period of land reform, the Han took all of China down to Viet Nam, Cochin China.

The article does mention cognitive differances, Autism twice. In recent testing the Han also show themselves to be visual thinkers.

So we now have Scientific evidence that Neanderthal males picked up some hot gracile human females, and replaced the male DNA in the line.

I love this finding, I think it is huge. Homo sapiens are sluts, just like the rest of the animal kingdom. Adam, and Eve, and Eve's distant cousin from the country with the protruding forehead. This couldn't be richer.

I know there are some American Indian groups who believe that Natives have always been on the continent and reject the out of Africa theory out of hand. I wonder if they will take anything from this.