https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/01/31/neanderthals-and-humans-lived-side-by-side-in-northern-europe-45-000-years-ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06923-7
Some paleoanthropologists found human bones in layers denoting multiple habitation periods for a cave in Europe. They carbon dated the bone
fragments and were able to extract DNA to identify modern human and
Neanderthal bone fragments. Some of the modern human remains had
evidence of hybridization between Neanderthals and modern humans within
6 generations, but not all habitation periods had evidence of recent Neanderthal introgression.
The evidence indicates that Neanderthals and modern humans were using
the same territory around 45,000 years ago. This was 20,000 years
before the glacial maximum, and around 15,000 years before Neanderthals
are thought to have gone extinct. These modern humans have not left
much of their genetics in Europe. Their influence may have been diluted
by later waves of migration into Europe. My guess is that once we
sequence more genomes from where the last traces of the hunter gatherers habitation that are found in Europe, more evidence that some of their
genetics survived into modern times may appear. The hunter gatherers
that were displaced by the agriculturalists were pretty much
exterminated in most of Europe, but we do have evidence that
interbreeding took place and that some of their genetics survive in the European population.
Ron Okimoto
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