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Are you part-Neanderthal?People of European descent may be 5% Neanderthal, according to a DNA study that counters the view that modern humans left Africa and replaced all other existing hominids. The same study, published in the latest issue of the journal PloS Genetics, also says West Africans could be related to an archaic human population... "Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," says Vincent Plagnol... Using statistics and computer modelling, the researchers focused on linkage 'disequilibriums', or sections within genes that did not make sense if only modern human matings are considered... The scientists are not certain which early human group could have contributed to West African DNA, but both Europeans and Africans in the study showed about the same 5% archaic contribution. Neanderthals are believed to have originated in Africa around 400,000 years ago, but they left and then settled in Europe, hence the apparent lack of interaction with modern humans in Africa. Alan Templeton, professor of Evolutionary and Population Programs at the University of Michigan, has also conducted DNA studies and comes to similar conclusions... New technologies are being developed to sequence nuclear DNA from fossils, so in the near future, scientists may learn more about how modern human genes compare with those of archaic humans, like Neanderthals.
by Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News (via)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Wednesday, August 23, 2006