2012/10/04 by Sriram Sankararaman, Nick Patterson, Heng Li +2 · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Social Sciences · #Allele #Archaeology #Biology #Demography #Evolutionary biology #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies #Forensic and Genetic Research #Gene #Gene flow #Genetic variation #Genetics #Haplotype #Linkage disequilibrium #Neanderthal #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Population
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002947
openalex publication_date 2012/10/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Comparisons of DNA sequences between Neandertals and present-day humans have shown that Neandertals share more genetic variants with non-Africans than with Africans. This could be due to interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans when the two groups met subsequent to the emergence of modern humans outside Africa. However, it could also be due to population structure that antedates the origin of Neandertal ancestors in Africa. We measure the extent of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the genomes of present-day Europeans and find that the last gene flow from Neandertals (or their relatives) into Europeans likely occurred 37,000-86,000 years before the present (BP), and most likely 47,000-65,000 years ago. This supports the recent interbreeding hypothesis and suggests that interbreeding may have occurred when modern humans carrying Upper Paleolithic technologies encountered Neandertals as they expanded out of Africa.