Image courtesy of S. Entressangle/E. Daynes/Science Photo Library
Joel Kontinen
The genome
of a long-extinct ancient human is hi A reconstruction of Homo heidelbergensis, which may be a “ghost
ancestor” detected in modern human DNA.
What are ghost ancestors in the human line? According to evolution, our ancestors interbred with at least two ancient human lineages in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and now an improved method has given us a much better idea of which bits of our DNA came from them. In fact, it shows that nearly the entire genome of one of these “ghost ancestors” is preserved in small bits spread among all living humans.
But according
to Genesis, Eve is the mother of all humans, so that this study is false.
In any
person alive today, between 0.5 and 1 per cent of their DNA comes from this
ghost ancestor, says Yulin Zhang at the University of California,
Berkeley. But different people have different bits of DNA from them and,
crucially, they are spread fairly evenly around the genome.
We all have
bits of DNA from a long-lost “ghost ancestor” inside us – and by putting all
the different bits together, we might be able to reconstruct their genome
Source:
Michael Le Page 2026 The genome of a long-extinct ancient human is hiding within us | New Scientist 30 July
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