# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  50k Year Old Girl Found to be 1/2 Neaderthal and 1/2 Denisovan

## holderlin

Found in the good old Denisovan cave. Dad was Denisovan and mom was Neanderthal.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0455-x

this is awesome

**edit** had them swapped

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## Angela

Some thoughts from Razib Khan:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/...medium=twitter

Chris Stringer:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Neanderthal?src=hash

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

Pretty awesome

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## Tomenable

Great! IIRC, the only similar case known before was Oase-1 (human + Neanderthal g-g-g-great-grandparent):

https://phys.org/news/2015-07-scient...anderthal.html

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## Ownstyler

Awesome news! Even a full skeleton would have started a decades-long, unsolvable theoretical debate if it had been discovered just 15-20 years ago.

That said, I'm kind of surprised we haven't learned even more about Denisovans by now.

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## bicicleur

> Some thoughts from Razib Khan:
> https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/...medium=twitter
> 
> Chris Stringer:
> https://twitter.com/hashtag/Neanderthal?src=hash


that cross lineage mating would occur in liminal territory seems logical to me,
except, I don't think the Denisova cave was liminal territory, except maybe during a glacial maximum, which was not at the time of the F1 hybrid

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## Ygorcs

It's the opposite: Neanderthal mother + Denisovan father.

Anyway, it's an amazing discovery, especially because it's a _1st generation (!!!)_ hybrid of the two species. Given how very few _Neanderthal/Denisovan_ Eurasian hominins have had their DNA analyzed, it's amazing that they could already find a 1st generation hybrid, and the Denisovan father also bears some traces of older Neanderthal ancestry, also indicating some admixture in the past. That may all be just a coincidence, but it's highly likely that it really indicates that hominins really mixed in a non-sporadic way (including us humans not just with Neanderthals and Denisovans, but even way back still in Africa, the increasingly likely _multiregional yet intra-African origin_ of humankind).

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## holderlin

> It's the opposite: Neanderthal mother + Denisovan father.


fixed


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## Angela

From Iosif Lazaridis:

"The Neandertal-Denisova split is dated to ~420 thousand years ago in the new Slon et al. paper, but this must've been earlier as the ~430 thousand year old Sima de los Huesos autosomal sequences were already on the Neandertal side of the split (Meyer et al. 2016)

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## halfalp

This is amazing! But i dont really understand the article, what is the datation of the bone fragment? " _The mother came from a population more closely related to Neanderthals who lived later in Europe_ " I dont understand that sentence, do they mean that the split between Denisovans and Neanderthals happened near the Altai and that only after Neanderthals migrate to Europe? This could change a lot of things on our perception about Neanderthals, especially taking account of Heidelbergensis.

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## O Neill

Ive read twice now that she was alive 90k years ago not 50k.
These journos really need to pay more attention when taking notes.

https://siberiantimes.com/science/pr...000-years-ago/

The 50 000 year old bracelet should get a thread of its own.

More Here

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...cienceDaily%29

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## LeBrok

> It's the opposite: Neanderthal mother + Denisovan father.
> 
> Anyway, it's an amazing discovery, especially because it's a _1st generation (!!!)_ hybrid of the two species. Given how very few _Neanderthal/Denisovan_ Eurasian hominins have had their DNA analyzed, it's amazing that they could already find a 1st generation hybrid, and the Denisovan father also bears some traces of older Neanderthal ancestry, also indicating some admixture in the past. That may all be just a coincidence, but it's highly likely that it really indicates that hominins really mixed in a non-sporadic way (including us humans not just with Neanderthals and Denisovans, but even way back still in Africa, the increasingly likely _multiregional yet intra-African origin_ of humankind).


 Knowing human nature it was always most likely scenario to me. We are lucky we can't have offspring with sheep. ;)
Anyway, we are a product of constant mixing and remixing. If only it was known by dudes who wrote the bible....

It seems like this mentioned encounter happened in last warm period before present one. Similar to modern people who have spread and mixed after last ice age gone away. Ice Age shrinks and separates, Warm Period expands and mixes populations.

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## Angela

> Knowing human nature it was always most likely scenario to me. We are lucky we can't have offspring with sheep. ;)
> Anyway, we are a product of constant mixing and remixing. If only it was known by dudes who wrote the bible....
> 
> It seems like this mentioned encounter happened in last warm period before present one. Similar to modern people who have spread and mixed after last ice age gone away. Ice Age shrinks and separates, Warm Period expands and mixes populations.


We share that view of human nature.:)

In the case of these groups, however, the populations were so small and isolated that the groups remained largely distinct. It was only in the few instances where they came into contact with one another that there was mixing.

Also, it took a long time for the EEF and the WHG to admix, a thousand years or more if I remember correctly. That may have had a lot to do with very different life styles. 

Religion also keeps people apart, i.e. Druze, Christian Arabs, Assyrian Christians in the Middle East.

I've always been a bit surprised how separate the German communities in Eastern Europe remained. 

Perhaps the most mixing occurred with predominately male migrations or invasions with the local women, for obvious reasons.

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## bicicleur

> We share that view of human nature.:)
> 
> In the case of these groups, however, the populations were so small and isolated that the groups remained largely distinct. It was only in the few instances where they came into contact with one another that there was mixing.
> 
> Also, it took a long time for the EEF and the WHG to admix, a thousand years or more if I remember correctly. That may have had a lot to do with very different life styles. 
> 
> Religion also keeps people apart, i.e. Druze, Christian Arabs, Assyrian Christians in the Middle East.
> 
> I've always been a bit surprised how separate the German communities in Eastern Europe remained. 
> ...


yes, there is a +/- 10.000 year overlap between Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe
but apart from the outlier Oase I, no indications of admixture in Europe have been found

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## Sile

I must be part of this ancient mix ..........more than 1 company gave me these figures !!!!
.

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## Ygorcs

> From Iosif Lazaridis:
> 
> "The Neandertal-Denisova split is dated to ~420 thousand years ago in the new Slon et al. paper, but this must've been earlier as the ~430 thousand year old Sima de los Huesos autosomal sequences were already on the Neandertal side of the split (Meyer et al. 2016)


Good point. I've often doubted Neanderthals and Denisovans would've split from each other as late as ~430,000 kya. I mean, even some 100% modern human populations, like the least admixed Khoisan, diverged from other parts of humankind ~200,000 kya - and still they are virtually identical to other _Homo sapiens sapiens_. Neanderthals and Denisovans would've been more similar to each if they had diverged only ~300-350k years before the genetic samples that have been analyzed.

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## holderlin

> Good point. I've often doubted Neanderthals and Denisovans would've split from each other as late as ~430,000 kya. I mean, even some 100% modern human populations, like the least admixed Khoisan, diverged from other parts of humankind ~200,000 kya - and still they are virtually identical to other _Homo sapiens sapiens_. Neanderthals and Denisovans would've been more similar to each if they had diverged only ~300-350k years before the genetic samples that have been analyzed.


I've always sort of wondered this. I don't think Denisovans and Neanderthals are much further apart on a PCA than the most separated human populations.

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## Gnarl

> Good point. I've often doubted Neanderthals and Denisovans would've split from each other as late as ~430,000 kya. I mean, even some 100% modern human populations, like the least admixed Khoisan, diverged from other parts of humankind ~200,000 kya - and still they are virtually identical to other _Homo sapiens sapiens_. Neanderthals and Denisovans would've been more similar to each if they had diverged only ~300-350k years before the genetic samples that have been analyzed.





> I've always sort of wondered this. I don't think Denisovans and Neanderthals are much further apart on a PCA than the most separated human populations.


This paper, which I am not allowed to link until I have ten posts, from a year ago uses an expanded data set, and finds a much deeper divergence point. Somewhere between 620 to 750 000 years for humans and Neanderthals, and 300 generations less for Neanderthals and Denisovans. Low or high estimates depend on which mutation rate you prefer. There is some pushback, but I got to say the deeper divergence feels intuitively right to me. It also seems to me that this would make the first expansion of the pre- Neanderthal/Denisovan species coincide neatly with the appearance of Abbervillian/middle Acheulian stone tools. Rather than the Mousterian.

Paper at: pnas.org/content/early/2017/08/01/1706426114

PS: Hi, I'm new.

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## Ailchu

> We share that view of human nature.:)
> 
> In the case of these groups, however, the populations were so small and isolated that the groups remained largely distinct. It was only in the few instances where they came into contact with one another that there was mixing.
> 
> Also, it took a long time for the EEF and the WHG to admix, a thousand years or more if I remember correctly. That may have had a lot to do with very different life styles. 
> 
> Religion also keeps people apart, i.e. Druze, Christian Arabs, Assyrian Christians in the Middle East.
> 
> I've always been a bit surprised how separate the German communities in Eastern Europe remained. 
> ...


i don't think that mixing, how many think about it, is not really human nature. and if it is then not-mixing is also part of human nature. wasn't there a study with the result that humans tend to like faces that have similar features as the faces of their parents? i also think that this has to do with your own opinion about the attractivness of yourself. my theory is that this is a mechanism to prevent or at least slow mixing down because mixing is biologically not beneficial per se. for example if there is a population living under certain circumstances and they meet another population, that maybe just have recently imigrated, it could destroy possible adaptions or other beneficial traits if both populations would mix too fast.

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## Angela

Ailchu,

We're not talking about 20-21st century "romantic love" here, or searching for a committed partner.

It's my considered opinion that men will mate with just about anyone given the opportunity. A silly example just occurred to me. Given his wealth and fame, Arnold Schwarzenegger certainly had access to a lot of very attractive women. His wife was also attractive. He had sex and a child with their extremely, imo, unattractive nanny. Get my point? 

Why did Anglo-Saxon white Americans sire so many children with their African slaves, or Portuguese and Spanish Latin Americans with Indian and African women, or the French in Canada with Indian women? The answer is: because they could. That happened even with their European wives in the house. Meanwhile, given that older men in many established societies had the wealth and more than their fair share of the women, many migrations throughout history were of young men seeking land, wealth etc., with foreseeable consequences. 

Even in established societies, some people are attracted to "exotic" looking people by their local standards. For goodness' sakes, in the summers when I used to be in Italy, the damn train doors would open and streams of Scandinavian and German and British young women would pour out. They weren't all rushing to sightsee in museums and churches. Nowadays men can go on sex tours of Cambodia and Thailand. Why?

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## Ailchu

maybe schwarzenegger and those slavers and rich men do not or did not really have to care about these women or if they got pregnant. but i think when it comes to the point where they actually have to decide between what women they really want to spend their resources on,maybe even kill or die for, or if they even want to spend any resources at all, then physical attraction will play a more and more important role. sure if you do not have to spend resources then you will often just do it that is especially true for men. maybe also if you have no other choice.
but if this wasn't the case humans, women and men, would not have sexual preferences.
"They weren't all rushing to sightsee in museums and churches. Nowadays men can go on sex tours of Cambodia and Thailand. Why?"
there are probably multiple reasons. people who can't succeed in their home country and just want to have sex and feel valued go there. in some poor countries this is almost exploitation and most of the time those destinations for sex tourism are indeed poor because this makes everything easier for those tourists. there are documentaries and articles about it and you often see that the men and women who do this have a few more pounds or are older. why do you think there are so many old men who go to thailand? then there is the explanation that holiday affairs are far away from home so a possible partner won't know about you cheating. or maybe there are also people who just think thai women are more attractive. but how many people are actually doing this compared to the people who are not doing it?

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## Angela

I think you're missing the obvious point that for most of recorded human history people really didn't have much choice when it came to mating. Until very recently in western Europe and I would bet in eastern Europe as well, if your family had any property whatsoever you married whom you were told to marry, where it would do the most good for your family. Nobody cared about your personal inclinations and whom you found attractive. 

Haven't you read Romeo and Juliet? That's only one example. A prime stock character in much of European comedy is the elderly, disgustingly lecherous rich old man married to a pretty teen age girl. You think she found him attractive? Chaucer is full of stories like that. 

As for the serfs, their choices were limited to the people on their lord's estate, and they had to get his permission to marry. In some benighted places the lord had the droit de seigneur and could sleep with any young girl he chose on her wedding night. You think anyone asked her if she was in agreement? 

Forty years ago, one of my distant cousins was told by her parents she couldn't marry the young man of her choice for absurd reasons. She almost had what used to be called a nervous breakdown before they relented. They didn't relent with her brother. He was married to a distant cousin, a very plain widow almost eight years older than he was in order to consolidate family holdings.

The problem with a lot of analysis that is done on topics like this is that young people, in particular, who don't have a very good grasp of the history of even a half century to a century ago, create these theories which never applied to life as it was actually lived, and is barely even a reflection of what goes on nowadays. 

If I belonged to a women's liberation group, which I don't and never have, they would kick me out for this, but it's my opinion that on average, and even today, men are different in terms of sexuality than women, especially once a woman has married and had children. A lot of men would happily and do have affairs even with women who aren't particularly attractive, whom they might not even like, and certainly don't love, and all while I think sincerely loving their wives some of them, merely because they like the hunt, they like variety, because it validates their sense of themselves as men and as powerful human beings. I don't like it, but that's the way it is, imo. 

Moralists, racists, whoever, can rail against it all they like, but it's the way it is.

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## Angela

I'm going to remove these posts, both yours and mine on this topic, and create a separate thread for them, as they're completely off topic.

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## exceededminimumso..

https://twitter.com/Katerina__Douka/...95892142219264

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## Gnarl

> Good point. I've often doubted Neanderthals and Denisovans would've split from each other as late as ~430,000 kya. I mean, even some 100% modern human populations, like the least admixed Khoisan, diverged from other parts of humankind ~200,000 kya - and still they are virtually identical to other _Homo sapiens sapiens_. Neanderthals and Denisovans would've been more similar to each if they had diverged only ~300-350k years before the genetic samples that have been analyzed.


Rogers, Bohlender and Huff used an expanded dataset in their paper "Early history of Neanderthals and Denisovans" in 2017, and found a divergence time of 620 - 744 kyears ago. 26 000 generations. Available on PNAS. This seems more intuitive to me, especially given the difficulties we seem to have had in breeding with Neanderthals. It would roughly coincide the apperance of the people who would develop into Neanderthals and Denisovans with the middle Acheulian tool set rather than the Mousterian.

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## EtotheA

Wich companies did you use?

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