Seminar of the Research Group Science, Reason and Faith and the Faculty of Sciences. Daniel Turbón. Pamplona, ​​May 29, 2013. Daniel Turbón is a professor in the Anthropology Unit of the University of Barcelona. Some of his lines of research are: Bipedalism, encephalization, dental evolution and Neanderthals (Paleoanthropology); mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosome, RFLPs, STRs and Paleogenetics (Molecular Anthropology). Second part of the Seminar on human evolution Presentation: http://www.unav.es/cryf/turbon13b.swf News: http://www.unav.es/cryf/dn20130529.pdf Summary: The amazing technological advances in Molecular Genetics have provided, in recent months, scientific data that were unthinkable just three years ago. Studies of mtDNA lineages - that of mothers who left offspring - in current human populations had made it possible to construct a map of current genetic diversity and probable migratory routes, which arose mainly from Africa. New studies, using 3.2 million different single-locus genetic polymorphisms (SNPs), have managed to complete the genetic map of current humans; and to calculate the oldest detected separation, which is estimated to be more than 100,000 years from the present, between the current Khoe-San Africans (formerly called Bushmen) and the Melano-Africans who speak languages ​​of Bantu origin. On the other hand, we know from paleogenetic studies of Neanderthals that they share more genetic variants with modern humans in Eurasia than with modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that the genetic flow from Neanderthals to the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of the current Eurasian groups from each other. Europeans have 2.5% of our genome inherited from Neanderthals. The biggest surprise has been the discovery of the Denisovans, a new human group in the scientific panorama of human paleogenetics. These are two skeletal remains found in Denisova, a cave in southern Siberia, near the Himalayas, in which, due to the low temperatures, the DNA has been well preserved. They are dated at 50,000 years old. They were neither Neanderthals nor modern humans, although they coexisted with both, and even mated with Homo sapiens. It is very strange that, for a 30,000-50,000 year-old Neanderthal, the genome of the Denisovans is so well preserved. In Neanderthals of this age, it is common for only 1% of the genome we analyse to be original and for the remaining 99% to be microbes that have contaminated the sample, which makes the work difficult and limited. In the case of Denisova, 70% of the genome is original. For those who study ancient genomes, this is a gem. The discovery that 5% of the genome of the Melanesian populations is inherited from the Denisovans indicates that, at some point, they had to have been somewhere where they encountered the ancestors of the Melanesians, and presumably this was not in southern Siberia. The Denisovans are thought to have spread across Asia in a similar way to how the Neanderthals spread across Europe and, like the Neanderthals, they became extinct after the arrival of modern humans. Introgressions of Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes have been detected in our genome. In particular, the highly polymorphic human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I system – under intense natural selection pressure – shows how modern humans acquired the HLA-B*73 variant in western Asia through admixture with Denisovans. Homo sapiens (ancestors of modern humans), Denisovans and Neanderthals must have separated about 400,000 years ago. Neanderthals migrated from Africa to Europe and western Asia; Denisovans left Africa for eastern Asia. The ancestors of modern humans left Africa only 65,000 years ago.