This is a dream of many Europeans. They want to prove somehow that Europeans are mixed with Neanderthals. In this way they can separate themselves from “them” Africans.
Now this is a new claim based on DNA mapping. But the claim is based on statistical models alone. There is no archaeological proof to support this claim. And I know very well that statistical conclusions do not represent what actually goes on in real world. For example, has anyone collected data that would create a perfect normal distribution?
But it is still an exciting claim worth the discussion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/science/07neanderthal.html?pagewanted=2&src=mv
Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence.
Scientists say they have recovered 60 percent of the genome so far and hope to complete it. By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution, they said.
A degree of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe would not be greatly surprising given that the two species overlapped there for some 15,000 years, from 44,000 years ago when modern humans first entered Europe to 30,000 years ago when the last Neanderthals fell extinct. Archaeologists have been debating for years whether the fossil record shows evidence of individuals with mixed features.
**But the new analysis, which is based solely on genetics and elaborate statistical calculations, is more difficult to match with the archaeological record. **The Leipzig scientists assert that the interbreeding they detect did not occur in Europe but in the Middle East and at a much earlier period, some 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, before the modern human populations of Europe and East Asia had split. There is much less archaeological evidence for an overlap between modern humans and Neanderthals at this time and place.
Richard Klein, a paleontologist at Stanford, said the authors’ theory of an early interbreeding episode did not seem to have taken full account of the archaeological background. “They are basically saying, ‘Here are our data, you have to accept it.’ But the little part I can judge seems to me to be problematic, so I have to worry about the rest,” he said.
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In his and Dr. Reich’s view, Neanderthals** interbred only with non-Africans, the people who left Africa**, which would mean that non-Africans drew from a second gene pool not available to Africans. Dr. Reich said that the known percentage difference in DNA units between African and non-African genomes was not changed by his proposal that some of the non-African DNA is from Neanderthals.