Neanderthal DNA and Basques

[Turin75]

Does anyone know if Basques have more proportion of Neanderthal DNA than others european populations ?

 

[Joey37]

Probably not. Now Cro-Magnon they would have more of, but Neanderthal is more common in northern Europe. Take me, for example. I have more Neanderthal variants of DNA than 94% of 23andMe customers, and I am 88% Northwest European (English, Irish, German). My stepfather is 88% Italian and has only 147 Neanderthal variants as opposed to my 313 (the most is 397).

 

[Ygorcs]

I find that unlikely, probably the Baltic Europeans, who have more European hunter-gatherer (WHG + EHG) ancestry, have more Neanderthal ancestry on average (the difference must be almost negligible, though, as the average variation in Eurasians usually range from 2% to 4%, not much then). Basques are one of the European populations that have best preserved the EEF ancestry of Late Neolithic Europeans, so they certainly must have much more WHG than the first, still almost unadmixed EEF, but it's still in the minority, and the ANF (Anatolian) part of their ancestry had a very significant proportion of Basal Eurasian admixture (i.e. non-African but lacking Neanderthal/Denisovan ancestry).

 

[Angela]

Cro-Magnon is not really a scientifically used term any longer. Europeans draw just a trace of their ancestry from Paleolithic people in Europe like Goyets or the people of the Franco-Cantabrian refugia. Their earliest "European" ancestry is from Mesolithic WHG and EHG.

 

[thejkhan]

Which group carried the most neanderthal genes - WHG? EHG? ANE? Whichever it is, I suppose the European population with the highest proportion of it would have the most Neanderthal ancestry.

 

[thejkhan]

My stepfather is 88% Italian and has only 147 Neanderthal variants

I (South Asian) have 190 Neanderthal variants which is less than 92% 23andme customers. I thought an average Italian would have much more than that.