
A Neanderthal, presumably huddling for warmth.
Siberia is a harsh, cruel land. It’s a dark, cold, lonely place, and it’s home to some of the most isolated places and communities in the world. It’s no wonder that Siberia has some interesting genetic oddities among its population. For example, ancient cavemen. Traces of DNA from the proto-human Denisovan Neanderthals have been found in Siberians of East Asian descent.
“We’ll probably be uncovering more events like these,” admitted Professor Mattias Jakobsson of Uppsala University in Sweden, who made the discovery alongside graduate student Pontus Skoglund. “Previous studies have found two separate hybridisation events between so-called archaic humans – different from modern humans in both genetics and morphology – and the ancestors of modern humans after their emergence from Africa. There was hybridisation between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans outside of Africa and hybridisation between Denisovans and the ancestors of indigenous Oceanians.”
Added the professor, “The genetic difference between Neanderthals and Denisovans is roughly as great as the maximal level of variation among us modern humans. We found that individuals from mainly Southeast Asia have a higher proportion of Denisova-related genetic variants than people from other parts of the world, such as Europe, America, West and Central Asia, and Africa.”
Jakobsson and Skoglund believe that the hybridization event took place 20 million years ago, or perhaps even earlier. This was after scientists believe humans split off from Neanderthals and Denisovans, though no one’s really sure of how that works due to the incompleteness of the human genome and a lack of genetic material concerning the prehistoric human population.
Tags: Denisovans, Siberia, Denisovan DNA found in Siberians, Neanderthal DNA found in Siberians, Mattias Jakobsson, Uppsala University, Sweden, DNA, hybridization, Pontus Skoglund, Denisovan DNA found in modern Siberians, caveman dna found in modern Siberia, East Asia, the human genome