European colonization of the Americas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492, although there was at least one earlier colonization effort. The first known Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings (Norse) during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows (51°N) in the area the Norse called Vinland, present day Newfoundland. Settlements in Greenland survived for several centuries, during which time the Greenland Norse and the Inuit people experienced mostly hostile contact. By the end of the 15th century, the Norse Greenland settlements had collapsed.[1]
In 1492, a Spanish expedition headed by Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, after which European exploration and colonization rapidly expanded, at first through much of the Caribbean Sea region (including the islands of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba) and, since the early 16th century, through the mainlands of both North and South America. In 1497, John Cabot landed in North America. A year later, Columbus reached the South American mainland. Eventually, the entire Western Hemisphere would come under the ambivalence of European nations, leading to profound changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. In the 19th century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas.[2] The post-1492 era is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange.
Early conquests, claims, and colonies
Animated Maps:
North America territorial sovereignty 1750-present
Central America & Caribbean sovereignty 1700-present.
South America territorial sovereignty 1700-present.
The first conquests were made by the Spanish and the Portuguese. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by the Pope, these two kingdoms divided the entire non-European world between themselves, with a line drawn through South America. Based on this Treaty, and the claims by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa to all lands touching the Pacific Ocean. With help from their powerful Indian allies, the Spanish rapidly conquered territory with Hernan Cortes overthrowing the Aztec and Francisco Pizarro conquering the Inca Empire. As a result, they gained control of much of western South America, Central America and Mexico by the mid-16th century, in addition to its earlier Caribbean conquests. Over this same timeframe, Portugal colonized much of eastern South America, naming it Brazil.
Other European nations soon disputed the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, which they had not negotiated. England and France attempted to plant colonies in the Americas in the 16th century, but these met with failure. However, in the following century, the two kingdoms, along with the Dutch Republic, succeeded in establishing permanent colonies. Some of these were on Caribbean islands, which had often already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease, while others were in eastern North America, which had not been colonized by Spain north of Florida.
Early European possessions in North America included Spanish Florida, the English colonies of Virginia (with its North Atlantic off-shoot, The Somers Isles) and New England, the French colonies of Acadia and Canada, the Swedish colony of New Sweden, and the Dutch New Netherland. In the 18th century, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland, while the Russian Empire gained a foothold in Alaska.
As more nations gained an interest in the colonization of the Americas, competition for territory became increasingly fierce. Colonists often faced the threat of attacks from neighboring colonies, as well as from indigenous tribes and pirates.
Early state-sponsored colonists
The first phase of European activity in the Americas began with the Atlantic Ocean crossings of Christopher Columbus (1492–1504), sponsored by Spain, whose original attempt was to find a new route to India and China, known as "the Indies". He was followed by other explorers such as John Cabot, who reached Newfoundland and was sponsored by England. Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. Amerigo Vespucci, working for Portugal in voyages from 1497 to 1513, established that Columbus had reached a new set of continents. Cartographers still use a Latinized version of his first name, America, for the two continents. Other explorers included Giovanni da Verrazzano, sponsored by France; the Portuguese João Vaz Corte-Real in Newfoundland; and Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635) who explored Canada. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and led the first European expedition to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the New World. In an action with enduring historical import, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean and all the lands adjoining it for the Spanish Crown. It was 1517 before another expedition from Cuba visited Central America, landing on the coast of Yucatán in search of slaves.
These explorations were followed, notably in the case of Spain, by a phase of conquest: The Spaniards, having just finished the Reconquista of Spain from Muslim rule, were the first to colonize the Americas, applying the same model of governing to the former Al-Andalus as to their territories of the New World. Ten years after Columbus's discovery, the administration of Hispaniola was given to Nicolás de Ovando of the Order of Alcántara, founded during the Reconquista. As in the Iberian Peninsula, the inhabitants of Hispaniola were given new landmasters, while religious orders handled the local administration. Progressively the encomienda system, which granted land to European settlers, was set in place.
A relatively large misconception is that a small number of conquistadores conquered vast territories, aided only by disease epidemics and their powerful caballeros. Recent archaeological excavations have induced the notion of a vast Spanish-Indian alliance numbering in the hundreds of thousands.[3] Along with cavalry and the use of cannons as a siege weapon, the Spanish conquistadores were able to utilize the divisions among native ethnic groups and implement them with their own forces. Even with these reserves, the Europeans still had great difficulties in establishing colonies or even initiating peace treaties as seen in the Arauco War, Chichimeca War, Red Cloud's War, the Second Seminole War, and Pontiac's Rebellion. Mexico was eventually conquered by Hernán Cortés and the Tlaxcala in 1519-1521, while the conquest of the Inca was carried out by some 40,000 Incan renegades led by Francisco Pizarro in between 1532 and 1535.
Over the first century and a half after Columbus's voyages, the native population of the Americas plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650[4]), mostly by outbreaks of Old World diseases but also by several massacres and forced labour (the mita was re-established in the old Inca Empire, and the tequitl – equivalent of the mita – in the Aztec Empire). The conquistadores replaced the native American oligarchies, in part through miscegenation with the local elites. In 1532, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor imposed a vice-king to Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, in order to prevent Cortes' independantist drives, who definitively returned to Spain in 1540. Two years later, Charles V signed the New Laws (which replaced the Laws of Burgos of 1512) prohibiting slavery and the repartimientos, but also claiming as his own all the American lands and all of the autochthonous people as his own subjects.
When in May 1493, the Pope Alexander VI enacted the Inter caetera bull granting the new lands to the Kingdom of Spain, he requested in exchange an evangelization of the people. Thus, during Columbus's second voyage, Benedictine friars accompanied him, along with twelve other priests. As slavery was prohibited between Christians, and could only be imposed in non-Christian prisoners of war or on men already sold as slaves, the debate on Christianization was particularly acute during the 16th century. In 1537, the papal bull Sublimis Deus recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless. Later, the Valladolid controversy opposed the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas to another Dominican philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the first one arguing that Native Americans were beings doted with souls, as all other human beings, while the latter argued to the contrary and justified their enslavement. The process of Christianization was at first violent: when the first Franciscans arrived in Mexico in 1524, they burned the places dedicated to pagan cult, alienating much of the local population.[5] In the 1530s, they began to adapt Christian practices to local customs, including the building of new churches on the sites of ancient places of worship, leading to a mix of Old World Christianity with local religions.[5] The Spanish Roman Catholic Church, needing the natives' labor and cooperation, evangelized in Quechua, Nahuatl, Guarani and other Native American languages, contributing to the expansion of these indigenous languages and equipping some of them with writing systems. One of the first primitive schools for Native Americans was founded by Fray Pedro de Gante in 1523.
To reward their troops, the Conquistadores often allotted Indian towns to their troops and officers. Black African slaves were introduced to substitute for Native American labor in some locations - most notably the West Indies, where the indigenous population was nearing extinction on many islands.
During this time, the Portuguese gradually switched from an initial plan of establishing trading posts to extensive colonization of what is now Brazil. They imported millions of slaves to run their plantations. The Portuguese and Spanish royal governments expected to rule these settlements and collect at least 20% of all treasure found (the Quinto Real collected by the Casa de Contratación), in addition to collecting all the taxes they could. By the late 16th century American silver accounted for one-fifth of Spain's total budget.[6] In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports.[7][8]
Economic immigrants
Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the sixteenth century, the first Englishmen to settle permanently in America hoped for some of the same rich discoveries when they established their first permanent settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company (and its off-shoot, the Somers Isles Company) financed by wealthy Englishmen who understood the economic potential of this new land. The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold or the possibility (or impossibility) of finding a passage through the Americas to the Indies. It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and that "he who shall not work shall not eat." (A direction based on text from the New Testament.) The extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of Virginia and nearby colonies like Maryland.
From the beginning of Virginia's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labour and a large portion of the immigrants were indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies. During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted three-quarters of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake region. Most of the indentured servants were English farmers who had been pushed off their lands due to the expansion of livestock raising, the enclosure of land, and overcrowding in the countryside. This unfortunate turn of events served as a push for thousands of people (mostly single men) away from their situation in England. There was hope, however, as American landowners were in need of labourers and were willing to pay for a labourer’s passage to America if they served them for several years. By selling passage for five to seven years worth of work they could hope to start out on their own in America.
In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy was the fur trade with the natives. Farming was set up primarily to provide subsistence only, although cod and other fish of the Grand Banks were a major export and source of income for the French and many other European nations. The fur trade was also practiced by the Russians on the northwest coast of North America. After the French and Indian War, the British were ceded all French possessions in North America east of the Mississippi River, aside from the tiny islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
After 1840, the Irish arrived in large numbers, in part because of the famines of the 1840s. Mortality rates of 30% aboard the coffin ships were common.[9]
Religious immigration
Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) were required to belong to that faith. English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Puritans, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German and Swedish Lutherans, as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Moravians and Jews of various nationalities.
Many groups of colonists came to the Americas searching for the right to practice their religion without persecution. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century broke the unity of Western Christendom and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which often faced persecution by governmental authorities. In England, many people came to question the organization of the Church of England by the end of the sixteenth century. One of the primary manifestations of this was the Puritan movement, which sought to "purify" the existing Church of England of its many residual Catholic rites that they believed had no mention in the Bible.
A strong believer in the notion of rule by divine right, England's Charles I persecuted religious dissenters. Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies. Later in the century, the new Pennsylvania colony was given to William Penn in settlement of a debt the king owed his father. Its government was set up by William Penn in about 1682 to become primarily a refuge for persecuted English Quakers; but others were welcomed. Baptists, Quakers and German and Swiss Protestants flocked to Pennsylvania.
The lure of cheap land, religious freedom and the right to improve themselves with their own hand was very attractive to those who wished to escape from persecution and poverty.
Forced immigration
Slavery existed in the Americas, prior to the presence of Europeans, as the Natives often captured and held other tribes' members as captives.[10] Some of these captives were even forced to undergo human sacrifice under some tribes, such as the Aztecs. The Spanish followed with the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean. As the native populations declined (mostly from European diseases, but also and significantly from forced exploitation and careless murder), they were often replaced by Africans imported through a large commercial slave trade. By the 18th century, the overwhelming number of black slaves was such that Native American slavery was less commonly used. Africans, who were taken aboard slave ships to the Americas, were primarily obtained from their African homelands by coastal tribes who captured and sold them. The high incidence of disease nearly always fatal to Europeans kept nearly all the slave capture activities confined to native African tribes. Rum, guns and gun powder were some of the major trade items exchanged for slaves. In all, approximately three to four hundred thousand black slaves streamed into the ports of Charleston, South Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island until about 1810. The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, Brazil, Mexico and to the United States is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans.[11][12] Of these, 5.4% (645,000) were brought to what is now the United States.[13] In addition to African slaves, poor Europeans were brought over in substantial numbers as indentured servants, particularly in the British Thirteen colonies.[14][15]
Disease and indigenous population loss
The European and Asian lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and various domesticated fowl, which had resulted in epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas. Thus the large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas. Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) swept ahead of initial European contact,[16][17] killing between 10 million and 20 million[18] people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas.[19][20][21] The cultural and political instability attending these losses appears to have been of substantial aid in the efforts of various colonists to seize the great wealth in land and resources of which indigenous societies had customarily made use.[22]
Such diseases yielded human mortality of an unquestionably enormous gravity and scale – and this has profoundly confused efforts to determine its full extent with any true precision. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas vary tremendously.
Others have argued that significant variations in population size over pre-Columbian history are reason to view higher-end estimates with caution. Such estimates may reflect historical population maxima, while indigenous populations may have been at a level somewhat below these maxima or in a moment of decline in the period just prior to contact with Europeans. Indigenous populations hit their ultimate lows in most areas of the Americas in the early twentieth century; in a number of cases, growth has returned.[23]
The Requerimiento: The proclamation set by Spain to the Native Americans:
"We ask and require you to acknowledge the church as the ruler and superior of the whole world and the high priest called pope and in his name the king of Spain as lords of this land. If you submit we shall receive you in all love and charity and shall leave you, your wives and children and your lands free without servitude, but if you do not submit we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you, we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make slaves of them and we shall take away your goods and shall do you all the harm and damage we can."
List of European colonies in the Americas
 | This section requires expansion. |
- British America (1607– 1783)
- Thirteen Colonies
- British North America (1783 – 1907)
- Indian Reserve (1763–1783)
- British West Indies
- New Courland (Tobago) (1654–1689)
- Danish West Indies (1754–1917)
- Greenland (1814 - today)
- Dutch Brazil (1630–1654)
- Dutch Guiana (now Guyana and Suriname)
- New Netherland (1609–1667)
- Tobago
- Virgin Islands
- French (1655–1763)
- New France (1534–1763)
- Acadia (1604–1713)
- Canada (1608–1763)
- Louisiana (1699–1763, 1800–1803)
- Newfoundland (1662–1713)
- Île Royale (1713–1763)
- French Guiana (1763-today)
- Saint-Domingue (1659–1804, now Haiti)
- Tobago
- Virgin Islands
- France Antarctique (1555–1567)
- Equinoctial France (1612–1615)
- Colonial Brazil (1500–1822)
- Cisplatina (1808–1822, today Uruguay)
- Barbados (1536–1620)
- Russian America (now Alaska, 1799–1867)
- New Granada (1717–1819)
- New Spain (1535–1821)
- Peru (1542–1824)
- Rio de la Plata (1776–1814)
- New Sweden (1638–1655)
- Saint Barthélemy (1785–1878)
- Guadeloupe (1813–1814)
My ancestors (Haplogroup A)
The Guaymí or Ngäbe are an indigenous group living mainly within the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca (or reserve) in the Western Panamanian provinces of Veraguas, Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro, as well as in the indigenous town of Conte, Costa Rica near the extreme southern tip of the country. Guaymí is the traditional term for the Ngäbe and is derived from the Buglere term for them (guaymiri). Local newspapers and other print media usually misspell the name Ngäbe as Ngobe or Ngöbe because Spanish does not contain the sound represented by ä, a low-back rounded a, slightly higher than the English aw in the word saw and Spanish speakers hear ä as either an o or an a. The language spoken by the Ngäbe is Ngäbere. There are approximately 200,000-250,000 speakers of Ngäbere today. A sizable number of Ngäbe have migrated to Costa Rica in search of work on the coffee fincas. Ngäbere and Buglere are distinct languages in the Chibchan language family. They are mutually unintelligible.
The Spanish found three distinct Guaymi tribes in what is today's western Panama; each was named after its chief and each spoke a different language. The chiefs were Nata, in the Province of Cocle, and Parita in the Azuero Peninsula and the greatest chief Urraca in what is now Veraguas Province.
Urraca is the famous one. He defeated the Spaniards time after time, and forced Diego de Albitez, a captain of the Spanish, to sign a peace treaty in 1522.
Sent in chains to Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic coast - according to historian Bartolomé de las Casas - Urraca escaped and made his way back to the mountains, vowing to fight the Spaniards unto death. And he fulfilled his vow. Urraca was so feared by the Spaniards that they avoided combat with his men. When Urraca died in 1531 he was still a free man.
The Guaymies were divided into two large groups: those of the lowlands along the Atlantic coast, and those of the tropical forest in the highlands of Veraguas and Chiriquí Province. Never surrendered, fighting until the collapse of the Spanish empire. When Panama broke away from Spain and joined Colombia in the early 19th Century, the Guaymies remained in their mountain villages. Only now slowly are some assimilating into modern society.
While many still live in basic, government-funded housing projects without electricity or clean water, a few Guaymi have been able to purchase solar electricity through an electrification project, as well as cell phone service. However, most still live at or below the poverty level. Because of poor geography in the region, efforts to bring roads and new infrastructure to Guaymi reservations has been limited. Nevertheless, many Guaymi reject such efforts and choose to live secluded lives away from modern societies.
Today the Guaymí are mainly subsistence farmers. On the Pacific slopes, the main crops are rice, corn, yucca, otoy, ñame (both tubers), several species of beans. Small-scale livestock production of chickens and pigs is maintained and in the higher elevations is supplemented by hunting. The primary crop for the Guaymí on the Atlantic slopes is green bananas.
In order to obtain money many Guaymí resort to working in the cash economy. Coffee picking, work on large cattle farms and work on banana plantations provide the main source of cash. Also, once made for war and ceremony, some Guaymi sell beaded necklaces on the side of the roads in Panama for profit.
The Guaymi women make many traditional crafts, both for the use of themselves and their families, but also to sell as extra income. These include handmade bags from plant fibers called "kra" in their language, colorful dresses called "nagua" and beaded bracelets and necklaces. The men of the Guaymi have a tradition of weaving hats from plant fibers. This is the traditional "Panama Hat".
Today, there is a small Baha'i community developing within the Guaymi community after the first primitive Baha'i center was built in El Progreso.
Latin American genes
The post-Columbian panmictic “natural experiment”
Economists in the last few years have been shifting toward testing their theoretical models, whether through the experiments of behavioral economics, or, “natural experiments.” The reason economists have had issues with testing their models is that experimentation on humans has some natural constraints. Macroeconomists have an even greater problem, as experimentation on whole societies not only presents ethical conundrums, but there’s no way to fund or implement experiments on this scale. Macroeconomists turn out to be the paleontologists of economics.
Of course economists aren’t the only ones who’ve had this sort of problem with humans. The reason that geneticists focused on organisms such as flies, mice and fish is partly that these taxa breed fast and are easy to maintain in laboratories. But obviously there are things you can do, such as mutagenesis, with model organisms which you can not do with humans. Human genetics has traditionally relied on “natural experiments” of a sort, inbred lineages, recurrent recessive diseases, etc. Genetics has been a supplementary handmaid to medicine by and large. But sometimes history can load the die in genetics’ favor as well.
But in the post-genomic era we have more to go on than impressions, we can quantitize the extent and nature of the admixture, something of importance when considering medical research. A new paper in PNAS adds some more to the growing body of results on Latin American genomics by including populations which have traditionally been overlooked, and also putting a spotlight on the long term impact of sex-biased admixture. Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture among Hispanic/Latino populations:
Hispanic/Latino populations possess a complex genetic structure that reflects recent admixture among and potentially ancient substructure within Native American, European, and West African source populations. Here, we quantify genome-wide patterns of SNP and haplotype variation among 100 individuals with ancestry from Ecuador, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic genotyped on the Illumina 610-Quad arrays and 112 Mexicans genotyped on Affymetrix 500K platform. Intersecting these data with previously collected high-density SNP data from 4,305 individuals, we use principal component analysis and clustering methods FRAPPE and STRUCTURE to investigate genome-wide patterns of African, European, and Native American population structure within and among Hispanic/Latino populations. Comparing autosomal, X and Y chromosome, and mtDNA variation, we find evidence of a significant sex bias in admixture proportions consistent with disproportionate contribution of European male and Native American female ancestry to present-day populations. We also find that patterns of linkage-disequilibria in admixed Hispanic/Latino populations are largely affected by the admixture dynamics of the populations, with faster decay of LD in populations of higher African ancestry. Finally, using the locus-specific ancestry inference method LAMP, we reconstruct fine-scale chromosomal patterns of admixture. We document moderate power to differentiate among potential subcontinental source populations within the Native American, European, and African segments of the admixed Hispanic/Latino genomes. Our results suggest future genome-wide association scans in Hispanic/Latino populations may require correction for local genomic ancestry at a subcontinental scale when associating differences in the genome with disease risk, progression, and drug efficacy, as well as for admixture mapping.
The issue here is that “Hispanic” and/or “Latino” is not a race. In fact, as American readers may be aware the category emerged in 1970 as a way of organizing ethnic and racial identity for the Census. Despite a real pan-American consciousness there is obviously a great deal of cultural and genetic variation in Latin America. Caribbean nations which a large African component have a different identity from Mexico, where the non-Spanish segment is indigenous. Conversely, Argentina has a self conception as a white nation, despite some ambiguity in genetics.
In this paper they focused on 100 individuals from Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This gives them a good coverage of different regions of Latin America, and also looks into populations which are not often included in these studies, such as Dominicans. A series of figures highlights the primary results.
I’ve rotated this figure to maintain its resolution. It’s a Frappe analysis of the ancestry of individuals within various populations assuming K ancestral populations. With Latin Americans the idea of ancestral populations makes a bit more sense, since we know what the ancestral populations are! They use the HGDP populations as a reference for points of comparison.
Since we’re focused on native, Africa and white ancestry, K = 3 is probably more important. No surprise that the Latin America populations exhibit variation in ancestral quanta within them. Some Mexicans look like Europeans. Some Mexicans look like Native Americans. And some Mexicans look mixed. I assume that most readers are aware of this, assuming that they encounter Mexicans at all in their daily life.
Of course the ancestry came in through different avenues. The sexual exploitation of black females by white males in the United States is well known, but it does seem that the same dynamic, at least in terms of the genetic combination, existed in Latin America for much of its history, with black females being complemented by indigenous females. Figure 5 illustrates this well. You see the various Latin American populations (the abbreviations should be obvious). The boxes span the 1st to 3rd quartile in ancestry within each subpopulation from each respective ancestral group (the whiskers represent the ranges). Note the differences between the X chromosome, which spends 2/3 of its time in females, and the autosome, which is not sex biased.
Ah, but we can get more precise than that. They typed these individuals on their mtDNA, which is passed purely through women, and their Y chromosomes, which is passed purely through men. These loci do not recombine, and so are transmitted in such a manner that it is relatively easy to reconstruct their phylogenies. There has been a great deal of phylogeographic exploration of these two loci. In the next figure what you see are the position of the individuals in this study in terms of total genome content distance from the three ancestral populations, but, the color of their positions is dictated by the origin of their mtDNA and Y lineages.
The maternal lineages show a really interesting pattern. There are a preponderance of native mtDNA lineages, and a significant number of African ones. But notice that most people of overwhelming European ancestry nevertheless retain a native maternal lineage! We saw this in Argentina, a population which identifies as white, seems to be highly admixed on the mtDNA. I suspect that what you’re seeing is the long reach of the first mothers, whose descendants intermarried with Spanish men who relocated to the New World. The Aztec and Inca nobility gave their daughters to the Spaniards who arrived, and I suspect that the predominantly European elites of Latin America still carry those lineages with them, despite their overwhelming limpieza de sangre. Another important point is that both Dominicans, and especially Puerto Ricans, carry signatures of these first mothers (as well as total genome content). 20 of 27 Puerto Ricans carry native mtDNA. This is somewhat shocking, as these Caribbean islands were reputed to have been nearly devoid of indigenous populations only a generation after First Contact, in large part due to disease.
Which brings me back to Neandertals. Non-African humans may carry somewhat less than 5% of their ancestry from this population. But to my knowledge there is no cultural continuity, and we do conceive of ourselves as fundamentally different from the Neander-kind. And yet genetically the Neandertals are highly successful through us The chaos, havoc, and population collapse wrecked by the Europeans when they encountered native New World populations may be somewhat analogous to what happened to archaic groups who had to face the oncoming demographic blast of African humans. And yet some of the genetic material of the locals was absorbed just before their extinction. The half-Taino children whose fathers were Spanish may have had the genetic defenses of European diseases which allowed them to survive the hardships of their lives. Granted, these children lost a genuine connection with their Taino ancestors, but the descent of those native peoples still persists onward. Interestingly, some readers of this weblog have had the same reaction to the idea that Neandertals persist in our own genome. Ultimately the reaction and response to this is not a scientific issue, but a normative one. Dare I even say, a spiritual one?
I'm mtdna haplogroup b2
Our history
| The National Geographic and IBM's Genographic Project: Charting the migratory history of the human species By Michael Hennigan, Editor and Founder of Finfacts Feb 18, 2007, 15:29 | Email this article Printer friendly page |
By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, American geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a San bushman who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.
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| San Bushmen who are direct descendants of the first Modern Humans Photograph: National Geographic Society |
Modern humans, he contends, didn't start their spread across the globe until after that time. Most archaeologists would say the exodus began 100,000 years ago—a 40,000-year discrepancy.
Proponents of the Out of Africa theory believe that over the last 2 million years, there have been many different human species, all but one of which became extinct - Modern Humans.
Wells says that around 20,000 years ago there are no people in America; 40,000 years ago in Europe, the Neanderthals were in in charge. At 50,000 years ago, Australia is part of an uninhabited continent. Before that (apart from the Neanderthals) you only find people living in Africa. He says to head back to 100,000 years ago, there seem to be more people - but still limited to Africa - and finally settle on 60,000 years ago as the low point. Then there were as few as 2,000 humans in existence. The worst time in the history of our species; one we nearly didn't survive.
Around 60,000 years ago the Earth was in the middle of an ice age, the effect of which was pretty chilling in the far north but in Africa it caused different problems. The ice sheets sucked up much of the world's moisture, causing widespread droughts particularly in Africa where the tropical latitude and intense sunshine, coupled with the lower moisture levels had a major environmental effect.
Wells says that several recent discoveries have revealed ape-like creatures that could walk upright around 5m years ago. Perhaps the best documented is Ardipithecus, discovered in the 90s. Around the time of Ardipithecus it seems that some apes decided to walk around on two legs. This probably happened again as a result of climate change.
| National Geographic/IBM Genographic Project: Tracking the Hennigan Y-Chromosome | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| DNA analysis shows that the ancestors of most Irish people came from the Iberian Peninsula, who moved north after the last Ice Age, which had depopulated Ireland. Dr Daniel Bradley, genetics lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, has said that a study published in 2004, into Celtic origins revealed close affinities with the people of Galicia, in North-Western Spain. Historians have for long believed that the Celts, originally from the Alpine regions of central Europe invaded the Atlantic islands in a massive migration 2,500 years ago. However, DNA analysis debunks this theory and conforms with the lack of archaeological evidence in Ireland, that the "Keltoi" who had invaded ancient Greece, had migrated in large numbers, to Ireland. What did happen, was that the prominent Irish clan leadership adopted European Celtic culture from trade and other contacts. A variation of the Celtic language had been in use by their ancestors in the Iberian Peninsula. Dr Bradley said it was possible migrants moved from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland as far back as 6,000 years ago up until 3,000 years ago. The study found that people in areas traditionally known as Celtic, such as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany and Cornwall, had strong links with each other and people in Ireland have more in common with Scots than any other nation. The study, conducted by Dr. Bradley and Brian McEvoy, a Ph.D student conducted the genetic study with the support of the Irish government to determine “whether there was a large incursion by Celtic people 2,500 years ago” as is widely believed. The scientists compared the DNA samples of 200 volunteers from around Ireland with a genetic database of 8,500 individuals from around Europe. (The Celts came from Central Europe stretching as far as Hungary). They found that the Irish samples matched those around Britain and the Pyrenees in Spain. There were some matches in Scandinavia and parts of North Africa. The scientists concluded that ‘the Irish’ genetic makeup stems from the onset of an ice-age around 15,000 years ago that forced prehistoric man back into Spain, Italy and Greece, which were still fairly temperate. When the ice started melting again around 12,000 years ago, people followed the retreating ice northwards as areas became hospitable again. The TCD study produced a map of Europe with contours linking places that are genetically similar. One contour goes around the edge of the Atlantic touching Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and includes Galicia in Spain as well as the Basque region. “The primary genetic legacy of Ireland seems to have come from people from Spain and Portugal after the last ice age.” said McEvoy. “They seem to have come up along the coast through Western Europe and arrived in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It’s not due to something that happened 2,500 years ago with Celts.” We have a much older genetic legacy. Paternal ancestry is traced via the transfer of the Y-chromosome from father to son, which has happened over 2,000 generations, back to one male human who lived in East Africa, about 60,000 years ago. Haplogroup and Haplotypes A haplogroup is a collection of closely related haplotypes - groups of closely linked genes. Each of us carries DNA that is a combination of genes passed from both our mother and father, giving us traits that range from eye colour and height to athleticism and disease susceptibility. One exception is the Y chromosome, which is passed directly from father to son, unchanged, from generation to generation. Unchanged, that is unless a mutation—a random, naturally occurring, usually harmless change—occurs. The mutation, known as a marker, acts as a beacon; it can be mapped through generations because it will be passed down from the man in whom it occurred to his sons, their sons, and every male in his family for thousands of years. In some instances there may be more than one mutational event that defines a particular branch on the tree. This means that any of these markers can be used to determine your particular haplogroup, since every individual who has one of these markers also has the others. When geneticists identify such a marker, they try to figure out when it first occurred, and in which geographic region of the world. Each marker is essentially the beginning of a new lineage on the family tree of the human race. Tracking the lineages provides a picture of how small tribes of modern humans in Africa tens of thousands of years ago diversified and spread to populate the world. In a DNA analysis that was done for the National Geographic Genographic Project, my Y-chromosome results identify me as a member of haplogroup R1b. The genetic markers that define our common ancestral history reach back roughly 60,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follow my lineage to present day, ending with M343, the defining marker of haplogroup R1b. Today, roughly 70 percent of the men in southern England belong to haplogroup R1b. In parts of Spain and Ireland, that number exceeds 90 percent. Not surprisingly, today the number of descendants of the man who gave rise to marker M173 remains very high in Western Europe. It is particularly concentrated in northern France, Ireland and Britain. and the Britain where it was carried by ancestors who had weathered the Ice Age in Spain. The markers of most Irish define them as being in the Atlantic Modal Haplotype, which confirm the strong links with Northern Spain. High King of Ireland - Niall of the Nine Hostages One in 12 Irish men could be descended from Niall Nóigiallach - Niall of the Nine Hostages, the High King who ruled at Tara, west of the site that became Dublin, from 379 to 405 AD, according to research conducted at Trinity College Dublin. He was the founder of the Uí Néill (which literally translated means "descendants of Niall") dynasty that ruled Ireland until the 11th century. Researchers at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity, headed by Dr. Bradley, have estimated that there could be as many as 3m men worldwide descended from Niall. The highest concentration of his progeny is in North-West Ireland, where one in five males have inherited his Y chromosome. The Trinity study examined the Y chromosome and Laoise Moore, a PhD student working on the Wellcome Trust-funded project, took DNA samples by mouth swab from 796 male volunteers and recorded the birthplace of their paternal grandfather. Dr, Daniel Bradley, who supervised the PhD, analysed the genetic fingerprints of the samples and found the same Y chromosome in 8% of the general population, with a cluster in the North-West of Ireland where 21% carried it. They calculated that the most recent common ancestor was likely to have lived about 1,700 years ago. Coupled with the geographical distribution centred on the North-West, this pointed to the Uí Néill dynasty. Brian McEvoy, one of the team at Trinity said that North-West Ireland has previously been the subject of anthropological writings…and has shown a strikingly high % of men from Haplogroup R1b (98%) versus 90% in South-East Ireland. According to McEvoy, this area was the main powerbase of the Uí Néills. The following are the Markers when a 12 marker test is applied:
Irish Type III Cluster and Hennigan Paternal Line In April 2006, American scientist Dr. Ken Nordtvedt, identified a cluster where the ancestral geographical area appears to be predominately Irish, but the haplotype was quite different from other Irish ones. It has been given the name "Irish Type III." The following are the Markers when a 12 marker test is applied to the Hennigan Y chromosome:
US databases of people with this haplotype, show that some 75% claim their ancestral line came from Ireland, many stating the counties of Clare, Tipperary or Limerick. These counties are the seat of many of the Dalcassian (Dál gCais) clans, the principal one having been the O'Brien clan. The most famous member of the O-'Brien clan was Briain Bóruma mac Cennétig (926 or 941 – 23 April (known as Brian Boru in English) who was High King of Ireland from 1002 to 1014. Although the exact details of his birth are unknown, he was born in the early tenth century near Killaloe (Kincora) (in modern County Clare). His father was Cennétig mac Lorcáin, King of Thomond and his mother was Binn ingen Murchada, daughter of the King of West Connacht. He was killed in a battle at Clontarf, Dublin, in 1014, between Irish, with Vikings on both sides. Like St. Patrick and the snakes, Irish historians had for long mythologised Brian Boru, as the man who drove the "Danes" from Ireland. In the main text on the Hennigan genealogy, I had speculated that we may have moved south to West Cork with the McCarthys, who were driven out of Tipperary by the O'Briens, even though we were closer cousins to the latter. The Y-Search US database produces 425 direct matches with Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, Puerto Rican and Chilean names among them. There is one direct match for a McCarthy whose latest known ancestor came from Dunmanway, County Cork, in the 19th century. There are two McCarthy ancestors who came from Bandon, County Cork and another from Kilbarry, Dunmanway, whose DNA is not Irish Type III. Members of a clan may not have always held the same surname because of a biological patrilineal connection. -Michael Hennigan NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SUMMARY ON JOURNEY OUT OF AFRICA TO EUROPE: Your Y-chromosome results identify you as a member of haplogroup R1b. The genetic markers that define your ancestral history reach back roughly 60,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follow your lineage to present day, ending with M343, the defining marker of haplogroup R1b. If you look at the map highlighting your ancestors' route, you will see that members of haplogroup R1b carry the following Y-chromosome markers: M168 > M89 > M9 > M45 > M207 > M173 > M343 Today, roughly 70 percent of the men in southern England belong to haplogroup R1b. In parts of Spain and Ireland, that number exceeds 90 percent. Your Ancestral Journey: What We Know Now M168: Your Earliest Ancestor Fast Facts Time of Emergence: Roughly 50,000 years ago Place of Origin: Africa Climate: Temporary retreat of Ice Age; Africa moves from drought to warmer temperatures and moister conditions Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 10,000 Tools and Skills: Stone tools; earliest evidence of art and advanced conceptual skills Skeletal and archaeological evidence suggest that anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and began moving out of Africa to colonize the rest of the world around 60,000 years ago. The man who gave rise to the first genetic marker in your lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. Scientists put the most likely date for when he lived at around 50,000 years ago. His descendants became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today. But why would man have first ventured out of the familiar African hunting grounds and into unexplored lands? It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have provided the impetus for your ancestors' exodus out of Africa. The African ice age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. It was around 50,000 years ago that the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to a savanna, the animals hunted by your ancestors expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. Your nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and the animals they hunted, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined. In addition to a favorable change in climate, around this same time there was a great leap forward in modern humans' intellectual capacity. Many scientists believe that the emergence of language gave us a huge advantage over other early human species. Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new territories, exploit new resources, and replace other hominids. M89: Moving Through the Middle East Fast Facts Time of Emergence: 45,000 years ago Place: Northern Africa or the Middle East Climate: Middle East: Semiarid grass plains Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tens of thousands Tools and Skills: Stone, ivory, wood tools The next male ancestor in your ancestral lineage is the man who gave rise to M89, a marker found in 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. This man was born around 45,000 years ago in northern Africa or the Middle East. The first people to leave Africa likely followed a coastal route that eventually ended in Australia. Your ancestors followed the expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East and beyond, and were part of the second great wave of migration out of Africa. Beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. Drought hit Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert, and for the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, your ancestors had two options: remain in the Middle East, or move on. Retreat back to the home continent was not an option. While many of the descendants of M89 remained in the Middle East, others continued to follow the great herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other game through what is now modern-day Iran to the vast steppes of Central Asia. These semiarid grass-covered plains formed an ancient "superhighway" stretching from eastern France to Korea. Your ancestors, having migrated north out of Africa into the Middle East, then traveled both east and west along this Central Asian superhighway. A smaller group continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country. M9: The Eurasian Clan Spreads Wide and Far Fast Facts Time of Emergence: 40,000 years ago Place: Iran or southern Central Asia Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tens of thousands Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic Your next ancestor, a man born around 40,000 years ago in Iran or southern Central Asia, gave rise to a genetic marker known as M9, which marked a new lineage diverging from the M89 Middle Eastern Clan. His descendants, of which you are one, spent the next 30,000 years populating much of the planet. This large lineage, known as the Eurasian Clan, dispersed gradually over thousands of years. Seasoned hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along the vast super highway of Eurasian steppe. Eventually their path was blocked by the massive mountain ranges of south Central Asia—the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and the Himalayas. The three mountain ranges meet in a region known as the "Pamir Knot," located in present-day Tajikistan. Here the tribes of hunters split into two groups. Some moved north into Central Asia, others moved south into what is now Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent. These different migration routes through the Pamir Knot region gave rise to separate lineages. Most people native to the Northern Hemisphere trace their roots to the Eurasian Clan. Nearly all North Americans and East Asians are descended from the man described above, as are most Europeans and many Indians. M45: The Journey Through Central Asia Fast Facts Time of Emergence: 35,000 Place of Origin: Central Asia Climate: Glaciers expanding over much of Europe Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 100,000 Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic The next marker of your genetic heritage, M45, arose around 35,000 years ago, in a man born in Central Asia. He was part of the M9 Eurasian Clan that had moved to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and onto the game-rich steppes of present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia. Although big game was plentiful, the environment on the Eurasian steppes became increasing hostile as the glaciers of the Ice Age began to expand once again. The reduction in rainfall may have induced desertlike conditions on the southern steppes, forcing your ancestors to follow the herds of game north. To exist in such harsh conditions, they learned to build portable animal-skin shelters and to create weaponry and hunting techniques that would prove successful against the much larger animals they encountered in the colder climates. They compensated for the lack of stone they traditionally used to make weapons by developing smaller points and blades—microliths—that could be mounted to bone or wood handles and used effectively. Their tool kit also included bone needles for sewing animal-skin clothing that would both keep them warm and allow them the range of movement needed to hunt the reindeer and mammoth that kept them fed. Your ancestors' resourcefulness and ability to adapt was critical to survival during the last ice age in Siberia, a region where no other hominid species is known to have lived. The M45 Central Asian Clan gave rise to many more; the man who was its source is the common ancestor of most Europeans and nearly all Native American men. M207: Leaving Central Asia Fast Facts Time of Emergence: 30,000 Place of Origin: Central Asia Climate: Glaciers expanding over much of Europe and western Eurasia Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 100,000 Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic After spending considerable time in Central Asia, refining skills to survive in harsh new conditions and exploit new resources, a group from the Central Asian Clan began to head west towards the European subcontinent. An individual in this clan carried the new M207 mutation on his Y chromosome. His descendants ultimately split into two distinct groups, with one continuing onto the European subcontinent, and the other group turning south and eventually making it as far as India. Your lineage falls within the first haplogroup, R1, and gave rise to the first modern humans to move into Europe and eventually colonize the continent. M173: Colonizing Europe—The First Modern Europeans Fast Facts Time of Emergence: Around 30,000 years ago Place: Central Asia Climate: Ice Age Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 100,000 Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic As your ancestors continued to move west, a man born around 30,000 years ago in Central Asia gave rise to a lineage defined by the genetic marker M173. His descendants were part of the first large wave of humans to reach Europe. During this period, the Eurasian steppelands extended from present-day Germany, and possibly France, to Korea and China. The climate fostered a land rich in resources and opened a window into Europe. Your ancestors' arrival in Europe heralded the end of the era of the Neandertals, a hominid species that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 29,000 to 230,000 years ago. Better communication skills, weapons, and resourcefulness probably enabled your ancestors to outcompete Neandertals for scarce resources. This wave of migration into Western Europe marked the appearance and spread of what archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture. The culture is distinguished by significant innovations in methods of manufacturing tools, more standardization of tools, and a broader set of tool types, such as end-scrapers for preparing animal skins and tools for woodworking. In addition to stone, the first modern humans to reach Europe used bone, ivory, antler, and shells as part of their tool kit. Bracelets and pendants made of shells, teeth, ivory, and carved bone appear at many sites. Jewelry, often an indication of status, suggests a more complex social organization was beginning to develop. The large number of archaeological sites found in Europe from around 30,000 years ago indicates that there was an increase in population size. Around 20,000 years ago, the climate window shut again, and expanding ice sheets forced your ancestors to move south to Spain, Italy, and the Balkans. As the ice retreated and temperatures became warmer, beginning about 12,000 years ago, many descendants of M173 moved north again to repopulate places that had become inhospitable during the Ice Age. Not surprisingly, today the number of descendants of the man who gave rise to marker M173 remains very high in Western Europe. It is particularly concentrated in northern France and the British Isles where it was carried by ancestors who had weathered the Ice Age in Spain. M343: Direct Descendants of Cro-Magnon Fast Facts Time of Emergence: Around 30,000 years ago Place of Origin: Western Europe Climate: Ice sheets continuing to creep down Northern Europe Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic Around 30,000 years ago, a descendant of the clan making its way into Europe gave rise to marker M343, the defining marker of your haplogroup. You are a direct descendent of the people who dominated the human expansion into Europe, the Cro-Magnon. The Cro-Magnon are responsible for the famous cave paintings found in southern France. These spectacular paintings provide archaeological evidence that there was a sudden blossoming of artistic skills as your ancestors moved into Europe. Prior to this, artistic endeavors were mostly comprised of jewelry made of shell, bone, and ivory; primitive musical instruments; and stone carvings. The cave paintings of the Cro-Magnon depict animals like bison, deer, rhinoceroses, and horses, and natural events important to Paleolithic life such as spring molting, hunting, and pregnancy. The paintings are far more intricate, detailed, and colorful than anything seen prior to this period. Your ancestors knew how to make woven clothing using the natural fibers of plants, and had relatively advanced tools of stone, bone, and ivory. Their jewelry, carvings, and intricate, colorful cave paintings bear witness to the Cro-Magnons' advanced culture during the last glacial age. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Wells says that homo erectus, the master toolmaker of the era, had a much bigger brain than his ancestors and developed many of the elements of modern human behaviour, probably including the use of fire and some form of rudimentary language. He even seems to have wandered out of Africa around 1.8m years ago - Java Man and Peking Man were both part of the Homo erectus family. He didn't stray far from the tropics, though (particularly when the world cooled down during the periodic ice ages), and was already on his way to extinction around 100,000 years ago.
After this change in abilities that led to the erectus African exodus, a long period of stasis seems to have set in. The hominids in the ensuing 1.7m years grew larger brains; several species appeared and then became extinct, and some even wandered out of Africa - giving rise to the Neanderthals in Europe about a quarter of a million years ago. During this time there were no big innovations. The tools used a million years ago in Africa do not differ much from those used by the Neanderthals 900 millennia later.
Neanderthals
Humans and Neanderthals interbred
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| Artist's impression of a Neanderthal hunter. New evidence suggests the Neanderthals and modern humans interbred. Image: American Museum of Natural History |
SYDNEY: Modern humans contain a little bit of Neanderthal, according to a new theory, because the two interbred and became one species.
The theory is the latest addition to the ongoing debate about what happened to this early species of human.
In a paper published this week in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of European researchers report a "mosaic of modern human and archaic Neanderthal features" in 30,000 -year-old human fossils from Romania.
Co-author Erik Trinkaus from Washington University explains: "[Some] closely related species of mammals freely interbreed, produce fertile viable offspring, and blend populations." This is what appears to have happened with Neanderthals and modern humans, he says.
Shorter and stouter than modern humans, but with larger brains, Neanderthals lived in Europe, central Asia and the Middle East for about 170,000 years before disappearing between 33,000 to 24,000 years ago.
Their extinction coincided with the migration of modern humans out of Africa and across Europe. Few mysteries in the history of human ancestry have been as hotly debated as what caused the extinction of the Neanderthals.
Some scientific theories have Neanderthals dying out because they were less well-adapted to the climate changes that occurred across Europe at that time. Others cite evidence of a more brutal end, in which Neanderthals were slaughtered by modern humans.
This new study helps to settle the controversy. According to the researchers, the populations probably blended together through sexual reproduction. "Extinction through absorption is a common phenomenon," says Trinkaus.
The human remains were found in Pestera Muierii ('Cave of the Old Woman'), an elaborate cave system in Romania. First uncovered in 1952, the fossils remained poorly dated and largely ignored until recently.
Using carbon dating techniques, Trinkaus and colleagues found that the remains were 30,000 years old. Their analysis of the bones revealed diagnostic skeletal features of modern humans, including smaller eyebrow ridges, very narrow holes where the nostrils join the skull, and a shin bone that is flat on one side and concave on the other.
However the mostly human skeletons also possessed distinct Neanderthal features; features that were not present in ancestral modern humans in Africa. These include a large bulge at the back of the skull, a more prominent projection around the elbow joint, and a narrow socket at the shoulder joint.
Further analysis of one skeleton's shoulder showed that these humans did not have the full set of anatomical adaptations for throwing projectiles, such as spears, during hunting.
According to the researchers, this mixture of human and Neanderthal features suggests that a complicated reproductive scenario existed as humans and Neandertals interbred. The hypothesis that the Neanderthals were simply replaced should therefore be abandoned, they suggest.
Trinkaus says we may carry some of the genetic legacy of the Neanderthals within us. However it would be difficult to determine which of us are more closely related to the Neanderthals: "there has been 30,000 to 35,000 years of human evolution since then," he says.
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