Twenty‐one years ago, a landmark exploration of mitochondrial DNA diversity popularized
the idea of a recent African origin for all living humans. 1 The ancestral African population …

In spite of past controversies, the field of ancient DNA is now a reliable research area due to
recent methodological improvements. A series of recent large-scale studies have revealed …

Although a rich record of Pleistocene human-associated archaeological assemblages
exists, the scarcity of hominin fossils often impedes the understanding of which hominins …

Background Recent analyses of de novo DNA mutations in modern humans have suggested
a nuclear substitution rate that is approximately half that of previous estimates based on …

High-throughput direct sequencing techniques have recently opened the possibility to
sequence genomes from Pleistocene organisms. Here we analyze DNA sequences …

Analysis of Neandertal DNA holds great potential for investigating the population history of
this group of hominins, but progress has been limited due to the rarity of samples and …

Neanderthals are the extinct hominid group most closely related to contemporary humans,
so their genome offers a unique opportunity to identify genetic changes specific to …

Our knowledge of the migration routes of the first anatomically modern populations
colonising the European territory at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, of their degree …

The first settlement of Europe by modern humans is thought to have occurred between
50,000 and 40,000 calendar years ago (cal BP). In Europe, modern human remains of this …

Morphological traits typical of Neanderthals began to appear in European hominids at least
400,000 years ago and about 150,000 years ago in western Asia. After their initial …