East Asians carry genes of another human species with many abnormalities

A research team from the UK has found the answer to the puzzling mystery: Ancient humans Neanderthals lived mainly in Europe, so why do East Asians carry the most of their DNA in the world?

Research led by ecologist and evolutionist Claudio Quilodrán from the University of Oxford (UK), suggests that the history of human migration and evolution may need to be rewritten.

Neanderthals were a different species but part of the same genus Homo (Human) as us Homo sapiens. They interbred with Homo sapiens communities that migrated from Africa, so almost all people outside Africa today have some Neanderthal in their blood - on average 2% of their genes.

We all have a little Neanderthal in our blood - (Graphic: Joe McNally)

Europeans, especially Northern Europeans, carry a fair amount of Neanderthal DNA , since this region was the primary habitat of this ancient human species. But recently, researchers have discovered something absurd: People of East Asian descent have 8-24% more Neanderthal genes than Europeans.

According to Live Science, Dr. Quilodrán and his colleagues discovered that a wave of farmers migrating from the ancient Middle East could explain the seemingly "paradox" above.

The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, offers a much more complex account of ancient history than previously known to scientists.

First, around 60,000-70,000 years ago a wave of Homo sapiens migrated from Africa to the rest of the world and were the ancestors of the first Homo sapiens - Neanderthal "hybrid" group.

Neanderthals may have been more widespread in Europe, but also elsewhere. Homo sapiens spread out across the lands they could reach.

Thus, Neanderthal blood was introduced into modern humans everywhere, causing them to never completely disappear even though they became extinct more than 30,000 years ago.

However, another wave of migration from Africa 10,000 years ago to Europe changed the situation . They also mixed with Neanderthals, but were more concentrated in Homo sapiens and were the group with the least Neanderthal elements in the world.

They were farmers whose ancestors had chosen to settle in the Middle East and Southwest Asia at the time Homo sapiens began to leave Africa.

It was this low-Neanderthal bloodline that diluted the Neanderthal elements in the European genome.

The results come from a review of more than 4,400 previously sequenced Homo sapiens genomes, from 40,000 years ago to the present day.

The proportion of Neanderthal DNA in the genome has revealed details about how groups of people from different species migrated and interbred with each other.

A deeper understanding of the "hybrid blood" in each of us has great significance in understanding how humans have evolved, as well as impacting some medical research, because genes from different species often bring about many unique characteristics, increasing or decreasing the risk of certain diseases.