Tens of thousands of years ago, modern humans mated with Neanderthals. But exactly how and when that happened, and who those groups of humans were, was less known. New research adds some clues.
Humans once had a way smaller footprint.For millennia, humans stayed in Africa. But then, roughly 100,000 years ago, humans started leaving the continent in waves."We don't know exactly when"says Sümer, but"sometime about 50,000 years or so, there was a group that migrated into Europe and Asia."To be more direct, prehistoric sparks flew. These early modern humans and the Neanderthals had babies.
Meanwhile, Sümer and her team were also trying to clock when early humans and Neanderthals interbred. They worked with rare well-preserved early human remains from Germany and the Czech Republic, including the best preserved paleolithic bone from an early modern human ever found. "In each generation, you can imagine the Neanderthal DNA getting broken into smaller pieces and getting shorter and shorter," says Sümer."So we can estimate how many generations must have passed since this event happened."
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