Discussions on the history and historiography of Australia's New England

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Neanderthal DNA gives timeline for modern human-related dispersal from Africa

During excavations near the entrance of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in southwestern Germany in 1937 a 124,000 year old Neanderthal femur was discovered. Now its mitochondrial DNA was analyzed and provides a timeline for a suggested migration of hominins out of Africa before 220,000 years ago
More DNA stuff, this time from Past Horizon. I quote from the start of the article, Neanderthal DNA gives timeline for new modern human-related dispersal from Africa.
Ancient mitochondrial DNA from the femur of an archaic European hominin is helping to resolve the complicated relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals. The genetic data recovered by the research team, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Tübingen, provides a timeline for a proposed hominin migration out of Africa that occurred after the ancestors of Neanderthals arrived in Europe by a lineage more closely related to modern humans. These hominins interbred with Neanderthals already present in Europe, leaving their mark on the Neanderthals’ mitochondrial DNA. The study, published in Nature Communications, (open access) pushes back the possible date of this event to between 470,000 and 220,000 years ago.

Sourced for later reference

5 comments:

Johnb said...

Again the assumption Jim that any new Hominem sp. has come out of Africa to appear where the archeological and subsequent DNA analysis has been found. That's not to say Africa isn't a part of the story but I still challenge that it is the only story. From what I understand The Neanderthals distribution ran from Portugal to the Altai Mountains with the Southern most finds being two very late specimens found in modern day Israel. It has been established genetically that Neanderthals and Denisons had a common ancestor some half a million years ago and they originally formed a common population but as the precursor Denisovans pushed into the Far East and precursor Neanderthals pushed West eventually geographic isolation resulted in two separate and distinct populations, one Eastern, the Denisovans, and one Western, the Neanderthals. To the best of my knowledge not a trace of Africa yet two distinct Hominem spp. Developed that were capable of breeding with other Hominem sp. including our own ancestral relations. The recent fossil discoveries in Morocco are I believe the oldest Homo sapiens fossils found to date and whilst Morocco is in Africa I would suggest it's the wrong part of Africa for the traditional 'Out of Africa' hypothesis.

Johnb said...

More news Jim, this weblink is to the New Scientist article "We may have mated with Neanderthals more than 219,000 years ago"
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2139694-we-may-have-mated-with-neanderthals-more-than-219000-years-ago/
Quote
We are realising more and more that the evolutionary history of modern and archaic humans was a lot more reticulated than we would have thought 10 years ago,” says team member Fernando Racimo of the New York Genome Center. “This and previous findings are lending support to models with frequent interbreeding events.”

Jim Belshaw said...

That's very interesting, John. Sorry for the slow response. I will come back to that study

Johnb said...

I rather wish I had taken more time Jim as I am reasonably certain my link references the same work as your original reference. The only difference being the suit it is dressed in. Never mind light from a different angle can give different insight.

Jim Belshaw said...

You wouldn't actually pick it up from a quick scan, Johnb. I had to re-read to trig. You are right, though, different lights give different angles including, in this case, links to past articles