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Modern Humans Did Not Admix with Neanderthals during Their Range Expansion into Europe

Open access
Currat, Mathias, Excoffier, Laurent·2004·PLoS Biology

Abstract

The process by which the Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans between 42,000 and 30,000 before present is still intriguing. Although no Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage is found to date among several thousands of Europeans and in seven early modern Europeans, interbreeding rates as high as 25% could not be excluded between the two subspecies. In this study, we introduce a realistic model of the range expansion of early modern humans into Europe, and of their competition and potential admixture with local Neanderthals. Under this scenario, which explicitly models the dynamics of Neanderthals' replacement, we estimate that maximum interbreeding rates between the two populations should have been smaller than 0.1%. We indeed show that the absence of Neanderthal mtDNA sequences in Europe is compatible with at most 120 admixture events between the two populations despite a likely cohabitation time of more than 12,000 y. This extremely low number strongly suggests an almost complete sterility between Neanderthal females and modern human males, implying that the two populations were probably distinct biological species.

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Metadata

Authors
Currat, M., & Excoffier, L.
Venue
PLoS Biology
Published
2004-11-30
Volume
2
Issue
12
Pages
e421
ISSN
  • 1544-9173 (ISSN-L)
  • 1545-7885
OpenAlex
W1974329144
Cited by
376
References
7
FWCI
194.17
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Modern Humans Did Not Admix with Neanderthals during Their Range Expansion into Europe. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020421
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Currat, M., & Excoffier, L. (2004). Modern Humans Did Not Admix with Neanderthals during Their Range Expansion into Europe. PLoS Biology. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020421

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