Where we come from? Which are our origins? Nowadays continues to be debated. To shed light on the origins of modern Europeans scientists had analyzed ancient DNA which reveals that there is a surprising genetic unity between the earliest known Europeans and contemporary Europeans, explaining when modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, our closest extinct relatives.
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| The skull of a man who lived between 36,200 and 38,700 years ago in Kostenki in western Russia
They had analyzed the DNA from the left shinbone of a skeleton, known as K14. K14 is one of the oldest fossils of a European modern human —36,200 and 38,700— and was found in the area that's now Kostenki, western Russia. The complete genome has been sequenced, making it the second-oldest modern human genome ever sequenced. The oldest was from the 45,000-year-old thighbone of a man found in western Siberia.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that contemporary Europeans shared genetic continuity with ancient Europeans.
The study found that K14's DNA holds about 1% more Neanderthal DNA than modern human. The result was expected by scientists, because if there has been any Neanderthal ancestry that humans might have, have diluted over time once Neanderthals went extinct.
People don’t know that 1.5 to 2.1 percent of our DNA — from Europe to Asia to the Americas — has Neanderthal origin. Genetic data from the research suggest that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred about 54,000 years ago, before the modern human population in Eurasia began to separate.
However, there are evidences that modern humans co-lived with Neanderthals for another 10,000 years. But instead, very little, if any, additional interbreeding occurred. So these give rise to the question “Are the Neanderthals more close to us that we thought?” Or now knowing that they interbreed among them, why so little? Robert Foley states "It's an extraordinary finding that we don't understand yet”.
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