title: Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals.
abstract: It has been shown that Neanderthals contributed genetically to modern humans outside Africa 47,000-65,000 years ago. Here we analyse the genomes of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan from the Altai Mountains in Siberia together with the sequences of chromosome 21 of two Neanderthals from Spain and Croatia. We find that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains roughly 100,000 years ago. By contrast, we do not detect such a genetic contribution in the Denisovan or the two European Neanderthals. We conclude that in addition to later interbreeding events, the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains and early modern humans met and interbred, possibly in the Near East, many thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuhlwilm
authors.affiliation: Efi Arazi School of Computer Science, Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya 46150, Israel.
authors.forename: Ilan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Gronau
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850, USA.
authors.forename: Melissa J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hubisz
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Cesare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: de Filippo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC), 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Prado-Martinez
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kircher
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IVPP, CAS, Beijing 100044, China.
authors.forename: Qiaomei
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Hernán A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Burbano
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC), 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Carles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lalueza-Fox
authors.affiliation: Área de Prehistoria, Departamento de Historia, Universidad de Oviedo, 33011 Oviedo, Spain.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de la Rasilla
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Paleobiología, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, 28006 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rosas
authors.affiliation: Anthropology Center of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Pavao
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rudan
authors.affiliation: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Quaternary Paleontology and Geology, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Dejana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brajkovic
authors.affiliation: Anthropology Center of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Željko
authors.initials: Ž
authors.lastname: Kucan
authors.affiliation: Anthropology Center of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Gušic
authors.affiliation: Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC), 08003 Barcelona, Spain.|Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), 08010 Barcelona, Spain.|Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CRG-CNAG), 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Tomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Marques-Bonet
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Aida M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Andrés
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S2, Canada.|Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Bence
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Viola
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Svante
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pääbo
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850, USA.|Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Siepel
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Sergi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Castellano
mesh_terms: D000531:Altitude; D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D002891:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 21 / Q000235:genetics; D017523:Croatia / Q000208:ethnology; D051456:Gene Flow / Q000235:genetics*; D015894:Genome, Human / Q000235:genetics; D023281:Genomics; D006239:Haplotypes / Q000235:genetics; D006579:Heterozygote; D006801:Humans; D006824:Hybridization, Genetic / Q000235:genetics; D059125:Neanderthals / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D011156:Population Density; D012800:Siberia; D013030:Spain / Q000208:ethnology; D013997:Time Factors