In another example of how fascinated we are with Neanderthals — our ancient human ancestors — last week the Colbert Report featured British paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer.
In a few minutes that were peppered with quips from Stephen Colbert, Stringer managed to explain a couple hundred thousand years of human evolution.
His book, Lone Survivor, How We Became the Only Humans on Earth, uses both archeological evidence and genetic evidence to make the case that long ago several distinct human species coexisted — Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis — but in the end only one, homo sapiens survived. Stringer points out that many of these early humans apparently mixed with modern humans and we find some of their DNA in us today.
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Although Neanderthals disappeared long ago, their DNA continues to live on in all non-African people. It may be that the DNA of other prehistoric human groups are also intermixed in our own DNA. Much like with Neanderthals, scientists extracted ancient DNA from the skeletal remains of another ancient cousin known as the Denisovans. The remains — a finger bone — was found in a cave in Siberia, showed that Denisovans were cousins of Neanderthals, who lived in Asia and disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Their DNA is found today in Melanasians.
As for Neanderthals, 23andMe launched our popular Neanderthal Lab about a year ago. It allows customers to determine what percentage of their DNA is Neanderthal. A typical range is between 1 percent and 4 percent with the average being about 2.5 percent, but there are outliers, who have much more.
Check out these posts about Neanderthals and Modern Humans:
• Did Humans and Neanderthals Have Sex?
• Find Your Inner Neanderthal
• New Evidence Suggests Humans and Neanderthal Interbreeding
Got Neanderthal DNA?
23andMe customers can find their inner Neanderthal or at least how much Neanderthal DNA they have at 23andMe Ancestry Labs. Not yet a customer? Visit our store!
“Neanderthals — our ancient human ancestors”, Neanderthals aren’t our ancestors, thats just incorrect. OK, well technically you could argue that they are the ancestors of 2.5% of the human genome via interbreeding, but thats not really what you meant in this introduction is it?!
so if we have neanderthal dna, even if it is a minority of the count, then it is relatively as valid to say we neanderthals did not die out, we just interbred with africans, as it is to say we came out of africa and bred with some neanderthals. the out of africa hypothesis as a platform for absolutists is shattered by the proof of the prevalence of neanderthal dna in non-africans. further,, the physical differences between africans and non-africans must be considered as potentially a manifestation of the contribution from the neanderthal genomic heritage.
My 23andMe report says what percentage of Neanderthal I am and what percentile it is of people with Northern European ancestry. But how does that compare with people from other regions? For instance, do people from Southern Europe have more or less Neanderthal DNA? Is there a percentile chart for all Europeans, or all Anglos? I’d like to know before I buy the T-Shirt :-)
Neanderthal Bob,
Thanks for the comment. To answer your question, most people in Europe have a similar percentage of Neanderthal DNA, between 1 and 4%, with a mean of 2.5%. We do not have a chart comparing people from different ancestry however.
It would be reasonable to assume that for every species only known by one finger bone, that there could be a hundred other ones that we interbred with, which aren’t recognized because we haven’t found their remains. Is there any way to spot exotic DNA without having to match it with old bones?
Is the Neanderthal DNA scattered randomly threw our genome, or is it concentrated in the same spots for all non Africans? Is it possible that we once had more Neanderthal genes but it was lost because most of it was inferior to African genes for survival?
The ratio of X and Y chromosomes would give some indication of peaceful interbreeding or conquest.
Some of the evidence for the Multiregional Hypothesis could also be explained by different primate species hybridizing. We know some monkey species will hybridize; we know we hybridized. There used to be far more primate species than today. Why wouldn’t they have been interbreeding too? Evan though most hybrids are failures, if a local species had evolved a solution to a problem (malaria, or low vitamin D from lack of sunlight), the hybrid from this species and a new one, migrating in, might have had an advantage over its pure blooded relatives.
This may have happened dozens, even hundreds of times. Our family tree might look more like a 3D relay race, and some indigenous people may be more indigenous than they realized.