Are Neanderthals part of modern human ancestry?
Neanderthals inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia starting about 230,000 years ago. They cohabited with modern humans for thousands of years before becoming extinct about 29,000 years ago. Since 1999, several DNA samples have been extracted from Neanderthal fossils and sequenced, allowing scientists to compare large sections of the Neanderthal genome with that of modern humans. This is possible because DNA fragments can survive for 50,000 to 100,000 years. Neanderthal DNA sequences were found to be about 99.5% similar to the modern human genome, indicating that modern humans and Neanderthals had a common ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The genetic difference between Neanderthals and modern humans, however, was on average about three times greater than the genetic difference between any two modern humans. Studies of the mtDNA of nearly 80,000 people found no traces of mutations known to be common in Neanderthal mtDNA. These differences indicate no significant interbreeding betwe
