Posted on 10/22/2014 2:15:19 PM PDT by Red Badger
France - Scientists said Wednesday they had unravelled the oldest DNA ever retrieved from a Homo sapiens bone, a feat that sheds light on modern humans' colonisation of the planet.
A femur found by chance on the banks of a west Siberian river in 2008 is that of a man who died around 45,000 years ago, they said.
Teased out of collagen in the ancient bone, the genome contains traces from Neanderthals -- a cousin species who lived in Eurasia alongside H. sapiens before mysteriously disappearing.
Previous research has found that Neanderthals and H. sapiens interbred, leaving a tiny Neanderthal imprint of just about two percent in humans today, except for Africans.
The discovery has a bearing on the so-called "Out of Africa" scenario: the theory that H. sapiens evolved in East Africa around 200,000 years ago and then ventured out of the continent.
Dating when Neanderthals and H. sapiens interbred would also indicate when H. sapiens embarked on a key phase of this trek -- the push out of Eurasia and into South and later Southeast Asia.
The new study, published in the journal Nature, was headed by Svante Paabo, a renowned geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who has pioneered research into Neanderthals.
- Neanderthal interbreeding -
The bone found at the Irtyush River, near the settlement of Ust'-Ishim, carries slightly more Neanderthal DNA than non-Africans today, the team found.
But it takes the form of relatively long strips, whereas Neanderthal DNA in our genome today has been cut up and dispersed in tiny sections as a result of generations of reproduction.
These differences provide a clue for a "molecular calendar", or dating DNA according to mutations over thousands of years.
Using this method, Paabo's team estimate interbreeding between Neanderthals and H. sapiens occurred 7,000 to 13,000 years before the Siberian individual lived -- thus no more than 60,000 years ago.
This provides a rough date for estimating when H. sapiens headed into South Asia, Chris Stringer, a professor at Britain's Natural History Museum, said in a comment on the study.
If today's Australasians have Neanderthal DNA, it is because their forebears crossed through Neanderthal territory and mingled with the locals.
"The ancestors of Australasians, with their similar input of Neanderthal DNA to Eurasians, must have been part of a late, rather than early, dispersal through Neanderthal territory," Stringer said in a press release.
"While it is still possible that modern humans did traverse southern Asia before 60,000 years ago, those groups could not have made a significant contribution to the surviving modern populations outside of Africa, which contain evidence of interbreeding with Neanderthals."
Anthropologists suggest a northern branch of Eurasians crossed to modern-day Alaska more than 15,000 years ago via an "ice bridge" that connected islands in the Bering Strait, thus enabling H. sapiens to colonise the Americas.
PinGGG!.................
If Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred, what is the justification for treating the Neanderthals as a separate species?
And he’s still voting in Chicago.
So this explains it?
race = breed
but most people never see the obvious.
None, really, unless you are a WAYSIST!..................
Interesting comments from the article:
Danny Dirocco · Top Commenter · Works at Retired
So as I see it, Native Americans STOLE the land from these Asians. Time for living Native Americans to make repatriations to the people in Siberia.
Reply ·
· 24 · 2 hours ago
Edmund Purcell · Top Commenter · UCLA
40 acres and a wooly mammoth.
Reply ·
· 24 · 2 hours ago
Terry D. Waters · Top Commenter · On the couch. at Retired
So Africans stole Eurasia from Neanderthals. So Africans owe reparations to anyone with Neanderthal DNA, which is pretty much the rest of the world. Offsetting penalties.
Reply ·
· 11 · 2 hours ago
If someone bred with a neanderthal 45,000 years ago, then we know that beer was invented before 45,000 years ago.
It explains the NFL, NBA...................
They haven’t found any 45k old Beer goggles............
LOL!...................
....and has already voted this year!..............twice!....................
OK, so the article says Homo Sapiens originated in Africa.
Where did Neanderthals originate? Did they originate somewhere else or are they just a different offshoot of hominids?
One theory is that Neanderthals left Africa first and spread about then the later homo sapiens followed them, eventually overtaking and outnumbering them................
Thanks for that reply. That means The Neanderthals were smarter than the Sapiens to leave lions infested Africa for the Mediterranean area first! hehe..
There may have been drought and famines there. Common in that part of the world, then as now..................
These people come to a conclusion and call it a scientific fact. It is still a conclusion and theory. There are many theories and conclusions. DNA form one bone can not prove much but it causes a jump to a lot of conclusions.
More data please and peer review.
If you read Origin of the Species, that was really Darwin’s first step, casting doubt on the traditional notion of species, so that he could redefine the term to suit his purposes. Without that step, his entire theory collapses in on itself. Most people just breeze right past that section without noticing the ramifications of what he did, though.
Coyotes and wolves can interbreed. Are they different species (yes, according to current taxonomy) or the same species?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.