Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans

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Interbreeding between archaic humans (such as Neanderthals and Denisovans) and anatomically modern humans (contemporaneous Homo sapiens) took place during the Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic. It has been revealed via genomic sequencing that all modern human populations outside of Africa today carry approximately 1–4% Neanderthal DNA, which is a result of genetic admixture that occurred after modern humans migrated out of Africa. Denisovan admixture is most prominent in Oceania, where modern human populations derive approximately 4–6% of their genome from this archaic group, while those in Eurasia and the Americas have been found to be carrying lower levels. Within Africa, successive Eurasian back-migrations that continued into the Neolithic introduced Neanderthal DNA to the modern human populations of North Africa, and while it was initially thought to be completely absent in the modern human populations of sub-Saharan Africa, low levels of Neanderthal DNA from these back...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Steven E. Churchill, Kamryn Keys, Ann H. Ross, CC BY-SA 4.0