Question: do are genes link to the neanderthals

Richard Badge answered on 19 Jun 2011:

Hi beth456kelly,

Neanderthals were a sister species to humans that evolved in southern europe around 800,000 to 400,000 years ago and stayed in europe and asia until about 30,000 years ago. They disappeared very quickly from the fossil record at the same time that lots of anatomically modern humans arrived in europe / asia from Africa.

Because these are relatively short timescales in evolutionary terms and we shared a common ancestor with neanderthals over 800,000 years ago, but our DNA is 99.5-99.9% identical to theirs (this is based on DNA extracted from neanderthal bones).

The same sequence data also suggested that there might have been some interbreeding between the invading Homo sapiens (us) and Homo neanderthalensis (neanderthals). This is controversial but if the genetic data is correct then we would have to consider that modern humans and neanderthals were subspecies or varieties of human, rather than seperate species.

The problem is that recovering DNA from bones that are 30,000 years old is very hard and you only get very tiny amounts – the techniques used are so sensitive that even tiny amounts of modern DNA contaminating the samples can lead to this kind of apparent mixing…

So the short answer to your question is: absolutely we are very, very similar genetically to neanderthals and might once have interbred.

More information at: http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_2.htm