https://www.iflscience.com/we-now-know-exactly-when-humans-and-neanderthals-hooked-up-74337
...
It’s estimated that between 1 and 4 percent
of the genomes of all non-African humans
alive today come from Neanderthals. These
genes have helped to shape our appearance
and behavior, although until now researchers
had struggled to recreate the encounters that
resulted in this exchange of genetic material.
To piece the story together, the authors of
an as-yet un-peer-reviewed study analyzed the
genomes of 59 ancient Homo sapiens individuals,
all aged between 45,000 and 2,200 years old.
Of these, 33 lived more than 10,000 years ago,
with Siberia’s famous Ust’-Ishim man being
among the oldest of the lot.
These prehistoric genomes were then compared to
those of 275 present-day humans from across the
world. Using computer software, the researchers
were able to trace the evolution of Neanderthal
genes across the millennia and work out exactly
how many generations it would have taken for
them to diverge in the way they did.
“By measuring the ancestry covariance for each
of the 16 ancient individuals that lived between
40,000 and 20,000 [years ago], we infer that the
Neandertal gene flow occurred between 321 and
950 generations before these individuals lived,”
write the study authors. More specifically, they
found that the flow of Neanderthal DNA into the
modern human genome occurred over a period of
6,832 years, with the average time of
introgression being 47,124 years ago.
...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.13.593955v1
Posted May 13, 2024.
Neandertal ancestry through time: Insights from
genomes of ancient and present-day humans
Abstract
Gene flow from Neandertals has shaped the
landscape of genetic and phenotypic variation
in modern humans. We identify the location and
size of introgressed Neandertal ancestry
segments in more than 300 genomes spanning the
last 50,000 years. We study how Neandertal
ancestry is shared among individuals to infer
the time and duration of the Neandertal gene
flow. We find the correlation of Neandertal
segment locations across individuals and their
divergence to sequenced Neandertals, both
support a model of single major Neandertal gene
flow. Our catalog of introgressed segments
through time confirms that most natural
selection–positive and negative–on Neandertal
ancestry variants occurred immediately after
the gene flow, and provides new insights into
how the contact with Neandertals shaped human
origins and adaptation.
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