Neanderthal admixture

Neanderthal admixture is the interbreeding of Neanderthals with ancestors of many living humans outside Africa. It left Neanderthal-derived DNA in present-day populations.

Introgression: The transfer of genetic material between populations through hybridization and repeated backcrossing. Neanderthal-derived sequences entered ancestral human populations through hybridization and persisted through later generations.
Out of Africa migration: The dispersal of modern humans from Africa that gave rise to most ancestry outside the continent. The main Neanderthal ancestry pulse followed modern humans’ expansion beyond Africa.
Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans: The proportion and genomic distribution of DNA inherited from Neanderthals in present-day human populations. This measures the enduring genetic contribution produced by admixture.
Neanderthal–modern human interbreeding: The mating and reproductive contact between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Genomic dates and fossils constrain, but do not fully settle, the timing and location of contact.
Ancient DNA: Genetic material recovered from archaeological or historical remains and analyzed with molecular methods. Ancient genomes let researchers compare Neanderthals directly with early modern humans.
Neanderthal: An extinct human species or subspecies that lived across Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals were the archaic population whose DNA entered human ancestors.
Neanderthal-derived haplotypes: Linked stretches of genetic variants in living people that descend from Neanderthal genomes. Their distribution shows which inherited segments survived natural selection and demographic change.
Population bottleneck: A sharp reduction in population size that changes genetic diversity through random sampling. Small ancestral populations may have amplified the effects of Neanderthal ancestry and later selection.
Linkage disequilibrium: The non-random association of alleles at different genetic loci in a population. Correlated Neanderthal variants help identify inherited DNA segments and estimate when they entered human ancestors.
Denisovan: An extinct archaic human group known chiefly from fossils and genomes found in Asia. Denisovans contributed ancestry to some living populations through a separate set of encounters.

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