45,000-year-old modern human bone yields a genome

Rucking_Fetard

Svante Pääbo's lab at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has mastered the process of obtaining DNA from ancient bones. With the techniques in hand, the research group has set about obtaining samples from just about any bones they can find that come from the ancestors and relatives of modern humans. In their latest feat, they've obtained a genome from a human femur found in Siberia that dates from roughly the time of our species' earliest arrival there.

The genome indicates that the individual it came from lived at a time where our interbreeding with Neanderthals was relatively recent, and Europeans and Asians hadn't yet split into distinct populations.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/45000-year-old-modern-human-bone-yields-a-genome/

Wibbs

Cool result. Though IMHO it's still early days. The more samples we get the better the picture will become. Too often individual results are too heavily focused upon. For example:

"Neanderthal DNA is present, and in roughly the same percentage that's found in current human populations: about 2.3 percent. If you assume that interbreeding was common during the years of our coexistence with Neanderthals, then you might have expected that number to be higher, so this argues against it."

They do go on to say the sequences were longer and then date the interbreeding event at 50-60,000 years ago. One question. Otzi the Iceman. "Only" three odd thousand years old and he was rocking over 5%? Double this sample. There are folks walking around today with over 4%. So for me I'd have no doubt there was an interbreeding event(s) at the date they give, I strongly suspect it was neither a few one offs, nor was it confined to that point or a particular geographical area. I'll bet the farm that we'll come to discover there was more admixture than we think and not just with the Neandertal folks, but with others that were already present in the landscape before we show up traipsing in from the horn of Africa all fancy like and looking for lurve. Never mind what was going on within Africa(which seems to get less of a focus).

FutureGuy

I reignited by love for early human history while on honeymoon after reading Sapiens: A brief history of humankind.

Nice little snapshot in terms of our interbreeding, and I am excited to see what else this technique finds from other samples!