Earliest Modern Man Genome Identified by Neanderthal Ancestry

The earliest modern human genome has been discovered thanks to Neanderthal ancestors. 

Since modern humans left Africa around 50,000 years ago, ancient DNA from Neanderthals and early modern humans revealed that the two groups actually interbred somewhere in the Near East. As a result, anyone outside of Africa carries about 2% to 3% Neanderthal DNA. Those Neanderthal DNA segments grew progressively shorter in modern human genomes over time, and their length can be used to approximate when a person lived.

Furthermore, archeological evidence released last year indicates that modern humans were already present in southeastern Europe 47-43,000 years ago. However, nothing is known about who these early human colonists were - or their connections to ancient and modern human communities - owing to a shortage of reasonably complete human fossils and the absence of genomic DNA.

Reconstructing Genomes

An international team of researchers records the earliest reconstructed modern human genome to date in a recent analysis published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The woman known as golden horse in Czech was discovered in Czechia and showed longer stretches of Neanderthal DNA than the 45,000-year-old Ust'-Ishim individual from Siberia, the world's oldest modern human genome. According to the evidence, she was a member of a group that existed before the cultures that gave birth to today's Europeans and Asians broke apart.

Anthropological study shows similarities with people who lived in Europe before the Last Glacial Maximum. Radiocarbon dating produced sporadic results, some as recent as 15,000 years ago. Prague scientists collaborated with genetics laboratories at the Max Planck Institute.

"We find signs of cow DNA contamination in the examined bone," says Cosimo Posth, co-lead author of the report. "This means that a bovine-based adhesive used in the past to consolidate the skull was returning radiocarbon dates younger than the fossil's true age." Posth is currently a Professor of Archaeo- and Palaeogenetics at the University of Tübingen, where he was formerly a research group chief at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Finding Neanderthal DNAs

However, the team's main findings of the age of the fossil were based on Neanderthal DNA. The sample had about the same amount of Neanderthal DNA in her genome as other non-African western humans, but the segments of Neanderthal ancestry were much longer on average.

The sample shows no genetic continuity with modern humans that lived in Europe after 40,000 years ago. "It is quite intriguing that the earliest modern humans in Europe ultimately didn't succeed," senior author says.

The Campanian Ignimbrite volcanic explosion, which occurred about 39,000 years ago and severely disrupted the climate in the northern hemisphere, may have limited the likelihood of Neanderthals and early modern humans surviving in major parts of Ice Age Europe.

Related Article: New Study: Prehistoric Fishes Had Limbs and Developed Lungs, Similar to Humans

A Brighter Future in the Field of Anthropology

Future genetic analyses of other early European individuals will aid in reconstructing the origin and demise of the first modern humans to expand out of Africa and into Eurasia until the formation of modern-day non-African cultures, as developments in ancient DNA show more about our species' story.

Also Read: Terrifying Fossils of 'Larger-Than-Humans' Giant Sandworms Found in the Ocean!

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