Intimate life of the neighbors in the cave
Geneticists have read the genome of a Neanderthal from Altai
This work (The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains), published on the pages of Nature and briefly retold on the website of the University of California at Berkeley (Neanderthal genome shows evidence of early human interbreeding, inbreeding), confirms the crossing of Neanderthals with both Homo sapiens and other species.
Researchers from Germany, China, Russia (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS) and the USA isolated DNA from a small fragment of a foot bone. This bone belonged to a Neanderthal woman who lived about forty millennia ago: it was found during excavations in the Denisova Cave. This cave in Altai became known after the remains of an unknown species of people were discovered there in 2010 ("Denisov man", the Latin name has not yet been assigned), but
Molecular genetic analysis confirmed that all three known species and some other, as yet unidentified human species, did not just alternately live in the same cave for more than ten thousand years. There was an exchange of genes between these species, that is, representatives of one sometimes interbred with representatives of the other. Having separated about 400 thousand years ago, these species have not become completely isolated from each other. Denisovans have also transferred part of their DNA to modern humanity: some ethnic groups in Oceania carry up to several percent of Denisov genes.
The Neanderthals who lived in Altai passed on at least half a percent of their genes to their Denisovan neighbors. Denisovans, as it was shown earlier, could inherit up to eight percent of their genes from some unknown species. In addition, to date, scientists have evidence that Neanderthals interbred with Cro-Magnons who left Africa, Homo sapiens. According to modern ideas, only the inhabitants of Africa can call themselves pure—blooded representatives of the species "reasonable man" - Asians and Europeans, along with the peoples of America or Oceania, are Mestizos, descendants of both Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals with Denisovans.
Reconstruction of the human evolutionary tree
Scheme: University of California at Berkeley
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru19.12.2013