Most People Carry Neanderthal Genes

Team Finds up to 4% of Human Genome Comes From Extinct Species, the First Evidence It Mated With Homo Sapiens

Christine Verna Max Planck Institute-EVA

A close-up of the bone Vindija 33.16 from Vindija cave, Croatia.

The burly Ice Age hunters known as Neanderthals, a long-extinct species, survive today in the genes of almost everyone outside Africa, according to an international research team who offer the first molecular evidence that early humans mated and produced children in liaisons with Neanderthals.

Jim MacKenzie/UCSC

Richard E. Green has run the Neanderthal Genome Project since 2005.

In a significant advance, the researchers mapped most of the Neanderthal genome—the first time that the heredity of such an ancient human species has been reliably reconstructed. The researchers, able for the first time to compare the relatively complete genetic coding of modern and prehistoric human species, found the Neanderthal legacy accounts for up to 4% of the human genome among people in much of the world today.

By comparing the Neanderthal genetic information to the modern human genome, the scientists were able to home in on hints of subtle differences between the ancient and modern DNA affecting skin, stature, fertility and brain power that may have given Homo sapiens an edge over their predecessors.

"It is tantalizing to think that the Neanderthal is not totally extinct," said geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who pioneered the $3.8 million research project. "A bit of them lives on in us today."

Intertwined

Research suggests humans, Neanderthals interbred.

The discovery is the climax of

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