Neanderthals, Not Humans, May Have Made Cave Art in Spain
Neanderthal genes are alive and well in people of European descent. That is a well-known fact. The timeline of events is what's still being figured out.
Scientists believe that Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged from a common ancestor more than 390,000 years ago. They inhabited Eurasia until they were replaced by modern humans around 40,000 years ago — and they tended to mate with anatomically modern humans as well.
About 90,000 years ago, a young girl lived in the Altai Mountains, a remote range located in what is now Russia. She died when she was only 13 years old, and her bones were piled up in a cave. Those bones revealed she was the child of an unconventional couple: two now-extinct hominins, a Neanderthal and a Denisovan.
“We knew from previous research that Neanderthals and Denisovans, who were two genetically distinct groups of ancient hominins, occasionally mixed with each other,” Slon tells Inverse. “But to actually find an offspring of such mixing — that was completely unexpected.”
The unusual DNA found in West Africa isn't associated with either Neanderthals or Denisovans. "We don't have a clear identity for this archaic group," Sankararaman says. "That's why we use the term 'ghost.'" The scientists think the interbreeding happened about 50,000 years ago, roughly the same time that Neanderthals were breeding with modern humans elsewhere in the world. It's not clear whether there was a single interbreeding "event," though, or whether it happened over an extended period of time.
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