M.Foss N. If you dont have any neanderthal in you, you cannot be descendant of any Norwegians nor vikings :) Nor anyone, from Europe, just from Africa? The first complete mapping of a Neanderthal genome took place about six years ago - supporting the human-Neanderthal hook-up and also showing that Neanderthal DNA in humans is a thing.
Study of Svante Pääbo and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany showed that all non-African people have approximately 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. And two more studies show that collectively, the Neanderthal DNA percentage in modern humans today is about 20%. Those genes have an influence on a range of areas: hair, skin, and disease.
Just as Pääbo was finishing sequencing the Neanderthal genome, a parcel landed on his desk. It contained a tiny fragment of a finger bone from the Altai mountains in Siberia. The piece was 30,000 to 50,000 years old and was thought to be from another Neanderthal. His team was in for a big surprise. The DNA analysis revealed an entirely new group of archaic humans, now dubbed the Denisovans, which split from a common ancestor with Neanderthals some 500,000 years ago.
So there are lots of things to investigate from DNA.