Over time, man has evolved. For many millennia there have been various hominid groups that have come until homo sapiens appeared around 1.8 million to 0.2 million years ago. For some time also homo sapiens lived alongside Neanderthals, and there is speculation that there has been interbreeding among them. Now, though, Neanderthal DNA in humans has been killed off by evolution.
Only a small amount of Neanderthal traits are found in modern human DNA. Many of the less desirable traits have been taken out over time by evolution and the propagation of homo sapiens. This also has much to do with the disappearance of Neanderthals, so much of their genes never really carried over to modern homo sapiens.
Neanderthal DNA makes up for only one to four percent of the modern human genome. This has been found out by a study made by Ivan Juric and his colleagues from the University of California Davis. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbreeding has produced a hybrid from which modern humans have come from.
One factor that might have contributed to Neanderthal genes gradually being lost is that the Neanderthal population was much smaller than homo sapiens. This has been the assessment of Juric's study, according to Science Daily. Because of the smaller size of Neanderthal population, over time natural selection has taken out Neanderthal traits that might not be important or else a disadvantage to homo sapiens.
Juric did state that the difference in population size alone cannot explain why Neanderthal gene traits have largely not carried over to homo sapiens. He did speculate that if Neanderthal population has been much larger, then there would have been a chance that more Neanderthal genes could have been carried by modern homo sapiens, as News Wise reports.
The Neanderthal line has also generally stopped, which might be another reason why not more of the Neanderthal gene traits have been transferred to modern humans. Much research would still be done on the relationship between humans and Neanderthals, but it is clear that Neanderthal DNA in humans has largely been killed by evolution. DNA evidence has also been found of a third relative to humans
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