Scientists studying the DNA of a 45,000-year-old man from Siberia have completed the oldest human genome sequencing and unraveled clues about modern humans mating with Neanderthals.
The study of the
oldest genetic record of modern humans was published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and found a similar amount of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians.
According to The New York Times, the research on the 45,000-year-old man supports a hypothesis that early humans interbred with Neanderthals and gives clues as to when that occurred.
“It’s irreplaceable evidence of what once existed that we can’t reconstruct from what people are now,” John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, told the Times. “It speaks to us with information about a time that’s lost to us.”
The research suggests that Neanderthal genes first entered the human gene pool between 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
The thigh bone from which the DNA was extracted was discovered in 2008 in Siberia by a Russian ivory carver and historian.
The 45,000-year-old man appears to be genetically related equally to modern-day Asians and Native Americans, National Geographic said.
Project leader Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London
told Discovery News, "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.”
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