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Résumés des journées 2024

Investigation of admixture between Neanderthal, Denisova and Central and Southeast Asian populations

Étude du métissage entre Neandertal, Denisova et les populations d’Asie centrale et du Sud-Est
Charlotte Antoine, Céline Bon, Raphaëlle Chaix, Evelyne Heyer, Romain Laurent and Bruno Toupance

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1When our species left Africa about 100,000 to 70,000 years ago, it encountered new environments. Our ancestors also met other hominins that had already been established in Eurasia for tens of thousands of years: Neanderthals and Denisovans. Thanks to paleogenetics, we now know that admixture events occurred between these species and ours, leading to the introgression of archaic haplotypes into the genome of the ancestors of present-day Eurasian populations. Most studies interested in the admixture between our species and archaic hominins focused on Western European, East Asian, and Oceanian populations. These studies showed that these populations possess between 1% and 4% of their genome inherited from Neanderthals and that Oceanian populations also have up to 6% of their genome inherited from Denisovans. Surprisingly, the extent of admixture with archaic populations remains largely unknown for Central and Southeast Asian populations despite their significance in addressing questions related to archaic admixture. Indeed, these populations inhabit border regions with East Asian and Oceanian populations. Moreover, archaic hominin fossils suspected to be Neanderthal or Denisovan were excavated in areas where current Central and Southeast Asian populations reside. Therefore, in this project I investigated traces of interbreeding between Neanderthals, Denisovans and the ancestors of present-day Central and Southeast Asian populations. Preliminary results indicate that a gene flow occurred between Neanderthals and Central and Southeast Asian populations. Central Asian populations inherited ~1.8% of their genome from Neanderthal while Southeast Asian populations inherited ~2.1%. The results concerning the estimation of Denisovan’s gene flow indicated that the statistics used to investigate these questions are very sensitive to the list of variable genetic positions used in the analysis. Therefore, further analyses are needed to uncover potential events of admixture between Denisovans and Central and Southeast Asian populations.

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References

Electronic reference

Charlotte Antoine, Céline Bon, Raphaëlle Chaix, Evelyne Heyer, Romain Laurent and Bruno Toupance, Investigation of admixture between Neanderthal, Denisova and Central and Southeast Asian populationsBulletins et mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris [Online], 36(S) | 2024, Online since 22 December 2023, connection on 16 May 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/bmsap/12338; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/bmsap.12338

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About the authors

Charlotte Antoine

Unité Éco-anthropologie (EA) UMR 7206, MNHN, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France ; charlotte.antoinederouet[at]gmail.com

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Céline Bon

Unité Éco-anthropologie (EA) UMR 7206, MNHN, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France

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Raphaëlle Chaix

Unité Éco-anthropologie (EA) UMR 7206, MNHN, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France

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Evelyne Heyer

Unité Éco-anthropologie (EA) UMR 7206, MNHN, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France

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Romain Laurent

Unité Éco-anthropologie (EA) UMR 7206, MNHN, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France

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Bruno Toupance

Unité Éco-anthropologie (EA) UMR 7206, MNHN, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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