Genes, Fossils, and Culture. An Overview of the Evidence for Neandertal-Modern Human Interaction and Admixture

摘要

This paper re-examines current arguments concerning the evidence for Neandertal-modern human interaction and admixture. While most researchers now agree that the ancestry of all present day humans can be traced back to African late Middle Pleistocene populations, at a time when the remainder of Eurasia was inhabited by 'archaic humans', most notably the Neandertals, issues that remain to he resolved are the tempo and mode of early modern human dispersal and interaction with archaic humans. This paper focuses on what happened at the time of contact in Europe, and assesses the level of admixture that may have occurred, as well as the extent to which such level may have varied in both time and space, it explains how the available mtDNA evidence does not preclude admixture at the time of contact, and is in fact consistent, depending on a number of parameters, with a possibly substantial Neandertal contribvition to the initial modern human population of Europe.