In 2002 , cavers excavate a mandibula in Peștera cu Oase of southwestern Romania . While it had some Neanderthal features , the bone belong to an anatomically modernistic human male who lived 37,000 to 42,000 age ago . Now , according to research worker analyzing deoxyribonucleic acid extracted from the bone , this modernistic human – one of the earliest homo in Europe – had a Neanderthalian relative just four to six generations ago . The employment , published inNaturethis hebdomad , advise that our species and Neanderthals pair in Europe far more recently than we thought .
After circularise from Africa , anatomically modernistic human began spreading across Europe between 45,000 and 35,000 long time ago . During that clip , Neanderthals vanished . They had been live in Europe since before 300,000 old age ago , and we know that Neanderthals lend 1 % to 3 % of the deoxyribonucleic acid of everyone out of doors of sub - Saharan Africa today . So our early ancestors had sexual practice with Neanderthals , we ’re just not sure when and how often it find . former approximation of human being - Neanderthal intermixing have ranged wildly from 37,000 to 86,000 years ago .
Now , a large international squad led byHarvard ’s David ReichandSvante Pääbo from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropologyhave used a dentistry drill to transfer two sample of bone pulverization from the Oase 1 mandible where a larger sample was previously dispatch for radiocarbon dating .
For their analysis , the researchers prepared two desoxyribonucleic acid infusion from 25 and 10 milligrams of os powder taken from the Oase 1 mandible . Svante Pääbo / Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
When they analyzed the desoxyribonucleic acid extracted from those samples , they happen upon that between 6 % and 9.4 % of Oase 1 ’s genome is gain from Neanderthals . That ’s more than any other human ever sequenced . Furthermore , he had a Neanderthal ancestor removed by only four to six generations : The mixing event occurred less than 200 years before he was hold .
“ The data from the jawbone mean that humans merge with Neanderthals not just in the Middle East but in Europe as well , ” first authorQiaomei Fu from the Chinese Academy of Sciencessays in astatement . Just last year , a study based onDNA extracted from a westerly Siberian thighboneplaced the halfway Eastern hybridize event at 50,000 to 60,000 years ago .
However , because Oase 1 was more genetically similar to present - day East Asians and Native Americans than to Europeans , he must have been part of a population that mixed with Neanderthals but did n’t contribute to later Europeans . “ It is evidence of an initial modern human occupation of Europe that did n’t give rise to the late population , ” Reich says in astatement . “ There may have been a pioneering chemical group of modernistic humans that got to Europe , but was afterwards supercede by other groups . ”
