Your ancestral heritage

In my beginner genealogy talks I warn people in pursuing family history research they may find out things they would rather not have known.

So.

Are you part Neanderthal?

A new DNA study seems to contradict previous ideas that there was no interbreeding between humans and earlier species such as the Neanderthals

As reported in in Nature News a new study suggests "There is a little bit of Neanderthal leftover in almost all humans." However, there was no evidence of interbreeding in the genomes of the modern African people included in the study. The study indicates interbreeding happened about 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and, more recently, about 45,000 years ago in eastern Asia.

Read the Nature News item at www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/news.2010.194.html

According to the article a soon to be published sequencing of the complete Neanderthal genome will aid in testing these findings.