Genomes of the Stone Age: disentangling Neandertal-human interactions using ancient DNA

Dr Mateja Hajdinjak, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology
Making inferences about human evolutionary processes using present-day genomes alone is extremely challenging. Ancient DNA, or DNA extracted from long dead organisms, has provided invaluable insights into prehistoric events and human evolutionary history that would otherwise remain inaccessible. Despite genomic data being recovered from more than 10,000 ancient individuals to date, relatively few genomes have been recovered from the times when Neandertals and humans could have met, owing both to the scarcity of hominin remains and the limits of ancient DNA preservation in temperate environments. In this talk, I will outline some of the key findings from the recent ancient DNA studies aimed at gaining a better understanding of Neandertal-human interactions across Eurasia, conducted while developing approaches to simultaneously minimise the destruction of invaluable hominin remains and maximise the amounts of usable genome-wide data for downstream analyses.

Hosted by Harry Hall, PhD student at the University of Liverpool