PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY—According to a report in Science News, a new study indicates that modern Africans inherited DNA from migrating Neanderthals. Geneticist Joshua Akey of Princeton University and his colleagues conducted a statistical analysis of DNA gathered from 2,504 modern Africans, Europeans, and East Asians, and compared it with records of DNA extracted from Neanderthal remains in Siberia and southeastern Europe. They concluded that modern Africans, on average, indirectly inherited as much as 0.5 percent of their genome from Neanderthals. The Neanderthal gene variants, which may have acted to strengthen the immune system and modify sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation, are thought to have been carried to Africa by a human population that left the continent between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago, interbred with Neanderthals outside of Africa, and then returned. “Our work highlights how humans and Neanderthals interacted for hundreds of thousands of years, with populations dispersing out of and back into Africa,” Akey said. “Remnants of Neanderthal DNA survive in every modern human population studied to date.” To read about evidence for interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans, go to "Hominin Hybrid," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.
