Benfunn har gjort det mulig å kartlegge 60 % av DNA hos neanderthalerne. Det moderne menneske bærer på 2-4 % DNA som stammer fra neanderthalerne. Det betyr at det må ha vært seksuelt samkvem mellom neanderthalerne og nyere tids mennesker.
Neanderthalerne utvandret fra Afrika for 400.000 år siden, det moderne menneske utvandret for 100.000 år siden. Neanderthalerne er menneskets nærmeste slektning og døde ut for 30.000 år siden, trolig fortrengt av det moderne menneske.
Det kommer som en stor overraskelse at de to gruppene paret seg. Men omfanget kan ha vært beskjedent.
It also raises questions about what it means to be a human being.
’It’s so exciting because the Neanderthals are our closest evolutionary relatives,’ said Dr Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who led the international project.‘If we want to define genetically what makes all human beings that live today unique - not only relative to our closest living relatives the chimpanzees but to our closest extinct relatives the Neanderthals - we can now begin to do so.‘
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The findings are the result of a four-year study in which researchers analysed 1.1 billion fragments of DNA taken from 40,000-year-old Neanderthal bones discovered in Russia, Spain, Germany and Croatia.The team - who publish their findings in the journal Science - were able to decode around 60 per cent of the entire genome of the extinct species.
They compared the results with the complete set of DNA from five people in southern and west Africa, China, Papua New Guinea and France.
The results showed that up to 4 per cent of the DNA of non-African people alive today is Neanderthal.
How there’s a bit of Neanderthal in all of us: DNA link to cavemen revealed
