Evidence for a genetic discontinuity between Neandertals and 24,000-year-old anatomically modern Europeans.

ABSTRACT: During the late Pleistocene, early anatomically modern humans coexisted in Europe with the anatomically archaic Neandertals for some thousand years. Under the recent variants of the multiregional model of human evolution, modern and archaic forms were different but related populations within a single evolving species, and both have contributed to the gene pool of current humans. Conversely, the Out-of-Africa model considers the transition between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans as the result of a demographic replacement, and hence it predicts a genetic discontinuity between them. Following the most stringent current standards for validation of ancient DNA sequences, we typed the mtDNA hypervariable region I of two anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens individuals of the Cro-M

SUBMITTER: Caramelli D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC164492 | biostudies-literature | 2003 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature