No hanky-panky between humans and Neanderthals, says study
PARIS, Aug 20 — Anthropologists have dealt a blow to theories
that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, bequeathing humans
today with some of the genetic legacy of their mysterious
cousins. Over the last two years, several studies have suggested
that H. sapiens got it on with Neanderthals, an enigmatic
hominid who lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the
Middle East for up to 300,000 years but vanished some 30-40,000
years ago. The evidence for this comes from fossil DNA, which
shows that on average Eurasians and Asians share between one and
four percent of their DNA with Neanderthals, but Africans almost
none. But a new study by scientists at Britain's University of
Cambridge says the shared DNA came from a shared ancestor, not
from “hybridisation” or reproduction between the two hominid
species. Reporting on Monday in the US journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Andrea Manica and
Anders Eriksson at the university'