A team of researchers with the participation of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) has found that the populations of North Africa show in their genes the trace of hybridization with Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ). Until now it was thought that this sign of mixing between this species that disappeared between 30,000 and 24,000 years ago and Homo sapiens could only be found in non-African humans.
The researchers, who publish their results in the journalPLOS ONE, have carried out aGenomic analysis in seven North African populations, from Egypt to Western Sahara. After studying 780,000 genetic markers in the genome of 125 people, they have detected an excess of variants shared with Neanderthals compared to the genomes of sub-Saharan Africans that they have used as a reference.
To delimit the origin of the Neanderthal component, the researchers have isolated those populations with an older local substrate, older than 40,000 years ago, and have found that these are precisely the ones with the most signs of interbreeding with Neanderthals. “The results indicate thatthe only modern humans without a genetic trace of Neanderthals are the African populations located south of the Sahara“, highlights the CSIC researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox, who works at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a joint center of the CSIC and the Pompeu Fabra University.
The work therefore suggests thatNorth African populations, shaped by a complex evolutionary history marked by diverse migratory movements,are the result of a migration back to Africa, after the contact of modern humans with Neanderthals in the Middle East. “These results do not mean that there were Neanderthals on the African continent, since the evidence from the North African fossil record shows archaic populations, but without Neanderthal traits,” explains Lalueza-Fox. Previous studies suggest that the encounter between the ancestors of the human species and Neanderthals took place in the Middle East between 40,000 and 80,000 years ago.
