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9h ago

Study Finds Prehistoric Pairings Favored Neanderthal Men and Human Women

Genomic comparisons and modeling point to a 62% excess of modern-human DNA on Neanderthal X chromosomes, offering a parsimonious explanation for long-noted X‑chromosome "Neanderthal deserts" in people today.

Neanderthal man at the human evolution exhibit at the Natural History Museum on 19th January 2024 in London, United Kingdom. The museum exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. (photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
FILE - This Friday, March 20, 2009 file photo shows reconstructions of a Neanderthal man, left, and woman at the Neanderthal museum in Mettmann, Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
People visit the exhibits inside the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins, including this Neanderthal skeleton display, Thursday, July 20, 2023, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, in Washington. Growing research – including ancient DNA technology – is changing the picture of human evolution and how our ancestors interacted with other human-like creatures. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Overview

  • Published February 26 in Science, the University of Pennsylvania team reports that interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals was strongly sex biased toward Neanderthal males with human females.
  • The researchers analyzed three high-quality female Neanderthal genomes (Altai, Chagyrskaya and Vindija) alongside genomes from 73 present-day African women with little to no Neanderthal ancestry.
  • Neanderthal X chromosomes carried about 62% more modern-human ancestry than their non-sex chromosomes, a mirror-image of the scarcity of Neanderthal DNA on the human X chromosome.
  • Statistical modeling indicates that repeated, directionally biased matings best reproduce the observed chromosome patterns, though selection and sex-biased migration could also have contributed.
  • The authors and outside experts caution that conclusions rest on few ancient genomes and inferential models, and they cannot determine social motives or consent behind the prehistoric pairings.