Possible Ancestral Structure in Human Populations

Determining the evolutionary relationships between fossil hominid groups such as Neanderthals and modern humans has been a question of enduring interest in human evolutionary genetics. Here we present a new method for addressing whether archaic human groups contributed to the modern gene pool (called ancient admixture), using the patterns of variation in contemporary human populations. Our method improves on previous work by explicitly accounting for recent population history before performing the analyses. Using sequence data from the Environmental Genome Project, we find strong evidence for ancient admixture in both a European and a West African population (p ≈ 10−7), with contributions to the modern gene pool of at least 5%. While Neanderthals form an obvious archaic source population candidate in Europe, there is not yet a clear source population candidate in West Africa.Synopsis: Determining the evolutionary relationships between modern humans and fossil hominine groups such as Neanderthals has been a question of enduring interest in human evolutionary genetics. In this paper, Plagnol and Wall present a new method for addressing whether archaic human groups contributed to the modern gene pool. Using sequence data from the Environmental Genome Project, they find strong evidence for ancient admixture in both a European and a West African population, with contributions to the modern gene pool of at least 5%. While Neanderthals form an obvious archaic source population candidate in Europe, there is not yet a clear source population candidate in West Africa. The authors' results have direct implications for the competing models of modern human origins. In particular, their estimates of non-negligible contributions of archaic populations to the modern gene pool are inconsistent with strict forms of the Recent African Origin model, which posits that modern humans evolved in a single location in Africa and from there spread and replaced all other existing hominines.