In a recent post titled African diversity is the result of admixture with archaic hominids I once again supported the notion that African genetic "diversity" is probably due to admixture between modern humans and archaic hominids in Africa and not the result of Homo sapiens having originated in Africa long ago, and all the rest of non-Africans having less "diversity" due to founder effects & bottle-necks.
Today I came across this paper: Genetic evidence for archaic admixture in Africa by Michael F. Hammer, August E. Woerner, Fernando L. Mendez, Joseph C. Watkins, and Jeffrey D. Wall. PNAS September 6, 2011. 201109300; published ahead of print September 6, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1109300108.
The paper puts forth proof of an archaic hominin admixing with Homo sapiens during a "recent interbreeding event". The abstract says (I highlighted relevant parts in bold font):
"A long-debated question concerns the fate of archaic forms of the genus Homo: did they go extinct without interbreeding with anatomically modern humans, or are their genes present in contemporary populations? This question is typically focused on the genetic contribution of archaic forms outside of Africa. Here we use DNA sequence data gathered from 61 noncoding autosomal regions in a sample of three sub-Saharan African populations (Mandenka, Biaka, and San) to test models of African archaic admixture. We use two complementary approximate-likelihood approaches and a model of human evolution that involves recent population structure, with and without gene flow from an archaic population. Extensive simulation results reject the null model of no admixture and allow us to infer that contemporary African populations contain a small proportion of genetic material (≈2%) that introgressed ≈35 kya from an archaic population that split from the ancestors of anatomically modern humans ≈700 kya. Three candidate regions showing deep haplotype divergence, unusual patterns of linkage disequilibrium, and small basal clade size are identified and the distributions of introgressive haplotypes surveyed in a sample of populations from across sub-Saharan Africa. One candidate locus with an unusual segment of DNA that extends for >31 kb on chromosome 4 seems to have introgressed into modern Africans from a now-extinct taxon that may have lived in central Africa. Taken together our results suggest that polymorphisms present in extant populations introgressed via relatively recent interbreeding with hominin forms that diverged from the ancestors of modern humans in the Lower-Middle Pleistocene.
The authors add "... central Africa may have been the homeland of a now extinct archaic form that hybridized with modern humans".
This is an extremely interesting step in the right direction!
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2018 by Austin Whittall ©
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