Human Phylogeography: The lessons learned, 1

[Patrick]

Very important read if interested in human ancestry:

Human Phylogeography: The lessons learned, 1

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

I just read the chapter of Reich’s book that Coyne recounts here a couple of days ago. Interesting stuff, articulately explained.

[T_aquaticus]

I hadn’t realized they had sequenced a 40k old human genome and found large chunks of neanderthal DNA (i.e. “Oase Boy”). It’s absolutely fascinating to see the chromosomal maps:

Here’s a figure from a talk by Svante Pääbo, showing in the top row for each chromosome (there are 22 listed, from 1-22) the entire genome of “Oase Boy” from 40K years ago in Romania. The green lines are Neanderthal sites in his genome. The five rows below Oase Boy are five modern human individuals; the colored lines are their “Neanderthal bits”. Note that for each chromosome, Oase boy has the biggest block of Neanderthal genes (green fluorescece):