WASHINGTON Next time you call someone a Neanderthal, better look in a mirror.
Many of the genes that help determine most people's skin and hair are more Neanderthal than not, according to two new studies that look at the DNA fossils hidden in the modern human genome.
About 50,000 years ago, modern day humans migrated out of Africa north to Europe and East Asia and met up with furrow-browed Neanderthals that had been in the colder climates for more than 100,000 years. Some of the two species mated. And then the Neanderthals died off as a species except for what's left inside of us.
Scientists isolated the parts of the non-African modern human genetic blueprint that still contain Neanderthal remnants. Overall, it's barely more than 1 percent, said two studies released Wednesday in the journals Nature and Science.
However, in some places, such as the DNA related to the skin, the genetic instructions are as much as 70 percent Neanderthal and in other places there's virtually nothing from the species that's often portrayed as brutish cavemen.
- University of Washington genome scientist Joshua Akey
The difference between where Neanderthal DNA is plentiful and where it's absent may help scientists understand what in our genome "makes humans human," said University of Washington genome scientist Joshua Akey, lead author of the paper in Science.
Harvard researcher Sriram Sankararaman, the lead author of the Nature study, said the place where Neanderthal DNA seemed to have the most influence in the modern human genome has to do with skin and hair. Akey said those instructions are as much as 70 percent Neanderthal.
"We're more Neanderthal than not in those genes," Akey said.
However, Sankararaman cautions that scientists don't yet know just what the Neanderthal DNA dictates in our skin and hair.
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