The ancient ancestors of people live in West Africa appear to have interbred with a mysterious “ ghost ” hominin – another missing persona in the account of humans .
The inquiry suggests that some populations living in West Africa today have traces of an antiquated hominin species laying within their deoxyribonucleic acid , much like howNeanderthal DNAcan still be obtain in many populations of non - African origin andDenisovan DNAlives on in people of Asiatic heritage . However , unlike these two relatives ofHomo sapiens , no strong-arm remain of this ancient hominin have ever been found by innovative skill .
report in the journalScience Advancesin 2020 , research worker from the University of California , Los Angeles ' School of Medicine count to find segments of archaic ancestry within the genomes of over 400 people from four West African population from the1,000 Genomes Project , including the Yoruba and Mende populations .
Using a computer - modeling technique , they found that between 2 and 19 percent of their genetic ancestry was derived from an unaccounted - for source , creating the gravid question : " who " was this ?
The researchers fence the best wager is that the genes of an unknown hominin go into the gene consortium through introgression , the flow of genes that happens when members of two population mate and the result hybrid mortal then breed with member of the parent populations . It ’s perfectly feasible that the hominin in inquiry could even be a whole young species of early human , say the researcher , whose antecedent most belike split off from the human kinsfolk tree before the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans .
We be intimate humans wide reproduced with both Neanderthals and Denisovans , and a small but important amount of their DNA can still be found in most European and East Asiatic populations , respectively . Furthermore , a previous cogitation showed for the first sentence that around 0.3 percent of Africans ’ genomescontain Neanderthal ancestry .
However , the unaccountable DNA found in the people presently living in West Africa does not mate up with Neanderthals nor Denisovans . believe these two hominins did n’t even knowingly step foot in Africa , that ’s not surprising , although it does remain to be seen “ who ” this coinage is .
Perhaps surprisingly , other missing “ wraith ” hominins have been base before in the genetics of modern - day humans . Whole - genome analysisof deoxyribonucleic acid choose from citizenry last on the Andaman Islands in Southeast Asia also happen a sizable number of genes that did n’t seem to be come from Neanderthals , Denisovans , orHomo sapiens(us ) .
The original variant of this clause waspublished in 2020 .
