Image courtesy of Christian Jegou/Science Photo Library
Joel Kontinen
Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were probably
interbreeding over a huge area stretching from western Europe into Asia.
We have long known that early
humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) interbred,
which is why most non-African people today have some Neanderthal DNA,
typically about
2 per cent of their genome. The interbreeding also saw the
Neanderthal Y
chromosome lineages replaced by lineages from H. sapiens.
But where this interbreeding happened and on what kind of
scale has long been a mystery, even if we are now starting to get a handle on
when it occurred. The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 600,000 years
ago, hea offding into Europe and western Asia.
Neanderthals left Africa about 600,000 years ago, heading
into Europe and western Asia. And the earliest evidence of H. sapiens migrating
out of Africa is skeletal remains from sites in modern day Israel and Greece,
dating back around 200,000 year Asia.
The dating for this study is off by many thousands of years. The Neanderthals
were the descendants of Adam and Eve, so their "interbreeding" is not unexpected.
Chris Simms 2026 Neanderthals and early humans may have interbred over a vast area | New Scientist 2 February
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