was previously thought, a study has shown.
Researchers in Germany discovered that the
50,000-year-old remains of a Neanderthal woman,
recovered from southern Siberia, carried traces of
homo sapiens DNA, indicating that one or more
of her ancestors bred with a human 100,000 years
ago. Previously, it was thought such couplings only
followed the “great migration” out of Africa 60,000
years ago, which ultimately led to the Neanderthals
becoming extinct. “An early modern human
population must have left Africa much earlier than
had been shown before and met with Neanderthals,
possibly those moving from Europe towards the
East,” Sergi Castellano, who led the study, said. This
is the first time human DNA has been discovered in
a Neanderthal, although it was already known that
Neanderthal genes found their way into humans,
as some people alive today carry 4% Neanderthal
DNA. The most likely scenario in this case, according to scientists, is that a human
man mated with a Neanderthal woman, who raised the child in her own community.
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