Study suggests inbreeding shaped course of early human evolution
Humans lived for thousands of years in
small, isolated populations and resulting inbreeding shaped the course
of human evolution, a U.S. researcher says. Research suggests the
severe inbreeding may have created many health problems and the small
populations were likely a barrier to the development of complex culture
and technologies, NewScientist.com reported Thursday. David Reich
of Harvard Medical School in Boston -- who has sequenced the genome of
Neanderthals and that of another extinct human, the Denisovans -- said
both species were severely inbred due to small populations."Archaic
populations had low genetic diversity, really extraordinarily low," he
said. "It's among the lowest diversity of any organism in the animal
kingdom."...more
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