ArticlePLoS biology2004
Modern humans did not admix with Neanderthals during their range expansion into Europe.
Article in PLoS biology, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Strategies to work with HLA data in human populations for histocompatibility, clinical transplantation, epidemiology and population genetics: HLA-NET methodological recommendations.International journal of immunogenetics · 2012Guideline
- Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ~300,000 years ago explains Neandertal origins.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Assessing the Potential of Ancient Protein Sequences in the Study of Hominid Evolution.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Recent advances in methods to characterize archaic introgression in modern humans.Genome research · 2026Review
- Archaic hominin admixture and its consequences for modern humans.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2025Review
- Ignoring population structure in hominin evolutionary models can lead to the inference of spurious admixture events.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Interbreeding between farmers and hunter-gatherers along the inland and Mediterranean routes of Neolithic spread in Europe.Nature communications · 2024Article
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- Resolving the "muddle in the middle": The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov.Evolutionary anthropology · 2022Article
- Addressing alpine plant phylogeography using integrative distributional, demographic and coalescent modeling.Alpine botany · 2022Review
- Diversification, Introgression, and Rampant Cytonuclear Discordance in Rocky Mountains Chipmunks (Sciuridae: Tamias).Systematic biology · 2021Article
- Inferring archaic introgression from hominin genetic data.Evolutionary anthropology · 2021Review
- Evaluating Causes of Current Genetic Gradients of Modern Humans of the Iberian Peninsula.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- A mitochondrial genetic divergence proxy predicts the reproductive compatibility of mammalian hybrids.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Article
- An amphibian species pushed out of Britain by a moving hybrid zone.Molecular ecology · 2019Article
- SPLATCHE3: simulation of serial genetic data under spatially explicit evolutionary scenarios including long-distance dispersal.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Craniomandibular form and body size variation of first generation mouse hybrids: A model for hominin hybridization.Journal of human evolution · 2018Article
- Cryptic Biological Invasions: a General Model of Hybridization.Scientific reports · 2018Article
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The process by which the Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans between 42,000 and 30,000 before present is still intriguing. Although no Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage is found to date among several thousands of Europeans and in seven early modern Europeans, interbreeding rates as high as 25% could not be excluded between the two subspecies. In this study, we introduce a realistic model of the range expansion of early modern humans into Europe, and of their competition and potential admixture with local Neanderthals. Under this scenario, which explicitly models the dynamics of Neanderthals' replacement, we estimate that maximum interbreeding rates between the two populations should have been smaller than 0.1%. We indeed show that the absence of Neanderthal mtDNA sequences in Europe is compatible with at most 120 admixture events between the two populations despite a likely cohabitation time of more than 12,000 y. This extremely low number strongly suggests an almost complete sterility between Neanderthal females and modern human males, implying that the two populations were probably distinct biological species.
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