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**meteeratymn** · 09-01-2012, 12:48 PM

All Europeans have Neanderthal admixture, but it's true we are talking about a few alleles. Not sure about the phenotypical impact, although sometimes I saw people with very curious traits.

A few alleles ? I suppose that you mean a few percent of our genome, which means over one hundred millions alleles !

I am not convinced that the percentage of Neanderthal admixture that emerged from the genome of the Croatian sample is very representative of the overall Neanderthal population. First of all, there were many very different subspecies of Neanderthal living at the same time (at least three in Europe, one in the Middle East and one in Central Asia). Based on the skeletons, these subspecies looked even more different that the most different humans today. We have probably inherited more from some subspecies than others, and if that is the case the Middle Eastern and Central Asian ones are the prime candidates. So until we don't have data for each subspecies, we won't know for sure how much of our genome actually comes from Neanderthal. I think it could well exceed 10%, perhaps as much as 20% in some individuals. I am not the only one to think so. The paleoanthropologist and Neanderthal expert Erik Trinkaus expressed exactly my opinion in an interview for National Geographic.

Trinkhaus adds that most living humans probably have much more Neanderthal DNA than the new study suggests.

"One to 4 percent is truly a minimum," Trinkaus added. "But is it 10 percent? Twenty percent? I have no idea."

09-01-2012, 12:48 PM	#23
meteeratymn Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 503 Senior Member	All Europeans have Neanderthal admixture, but it's true we are talking about a few alleles. Not sure about the phenotypical impact, although sometimes I saw people with very curious traits. A few alleles ? I suppose that you mean a few percent of our genome, which means over one hundred millions alleles ! I am not convinced that the percentage of Neanderthal admixture that emerged from the genome of the Croatian sample is very representative of the overall Neanderthal population. First of all, there were many very different subspecies of Neanderthal living at the same time (at least three in Europe, one in the Middle East and one in Central Asia). Based on the skeletons, these subspecies looked even more different that the most different humans today. We have probably inherited more from some subspecies than others, and if that is the case the Middle Eastern and Central Asian ones are the prime candidates. So until we don't have data for each subspecies, we won't know for sure how much of our genome actually comes from Neanderthal. I think it could well exceed 10%, perhaps as much as 20% in some individuals. I am not the only one to think so. The paleoanthropologist and Neanderthal expert Erik Trinkaus expressed exactly my opinion in an interview for National Geographic. Trinkhaus adds that most living humans probably have much more Neanderthal DNA than the new study suggests. "One to 4 percent is truly a minimum," Trinkaus added. "But is it 10 percent? Twenty percent? I have no idea."
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