Reconstructing the genetic history of late Neanderthals
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Mateja Hajdinjak Qiaomei Fu Alexander Hübner Martin Petr Fabrizio Mafessoni Steffi Grote Pontus Skoglund Vagheesh Narasimham Hélène Rougier Isabelle Crevecoeur Patrick Semal Marie Soressi Sahra Talamo Jean-Jacques Hublin Ivan Gušić Željko Kucan Pavao Rudan Liubov V Golovanova Vladimir B Doronichev Cosimo Posth Johannes Krause Petra Korlević Sarah Nagel Birgit Nickel Montgomery Slatkin Nick Patterson David Reich Kay Prüfer Matthias Meyer Svante Pääbo Janet Kelso Toggle all authors (31)
Abstract
Although it has previously been shown that Neanderthals contributed DNA to modern humans, not much is known about the genetic diversity of Neanderthals or the relationship between late Neanderthal populations at the time at which their last interactions with early modern humans occurred and before they eventually disappeared. Our ability to retrieve DNA from a larger number of Neanderthal individuals has been limited by poor preservation of endogenous DNA and contamination of Neanderthal skeletal remains by large amounts of microbial and present-day human DNA. Here we use hypochlorite treatment of as little as 9 mg of bone or tooth powder to generate between 1- and 2.7-fold genomic coverage of five Neanderthals who lived around 39,000 to 47,000 years ago (that is, late Neanderthals), thereby doubling the number of Neanderthals for which genome sequences are available. Genetic similarity among late Neanderthals is well predicted by their geographical location, and comparison to the genome of an older Neanderthal from the Caucasus indicates that a population turnover is likely to have occurred, either in the Caucasus or throughout Europe, towards the end of Neanderthal history. We find that the bulk of Neanderthal gene flow into early modern humans originated from one or more source populations that diverged from the Neanderthals that were studied here at least 70,000 years ago, but after they split from a previously sequenced Neanderthal from Siberia around 150,000 years ago. Although four of the Neanderthals studied here post-date the putative arrival of early modern humans into Europe, we do not detect any recent gene flow from early modern humans in their ancestry.
Journal details
Journal Nature
Volume 555
Issue number 7698
Pages 652-656
Available online
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Publisher website (DOI) 10.1038/nature26151
Europe PubMed Central 29562232
Pubmed 29562232
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