Description

Neandertals lived in western Eurasia and the Middle east until becoming extinct around 40,000 years ago. We have recently sequenced the Neandertal genome to high quality, and have found that up to about 2% of the genomes of people living outside Africa derive from Neandertals. We have also sequenced the genome of a finger bone from Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. This derives from a hitherto unknown group of hominins, which we call Denisovans. Up to approximately 4% of the genomes of people now living in Papua New Guinea and other parts of Melanesia derive from Denisovans. Together, these findings suggest a 'leaky replacement' scenario of human origins in which anatomically modern humans emerged out of Africa and received some degree of gene flow from archaic human populations in Eurasia that they ultimately replaced. The Neandertal and Denisova genomes allow the identification of novel genomic features that appeared in present-day humans since their divergence from a common ancestor with their closest extinct relatives. This lecture will also describe preliminary analyses of such features. http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=9780465020836