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Geneticists seized the opportunity provided by an international Basque cultural event held in Idaho in 2010 to sample volunteers and study Basque DNA. The result was two studies, including "The Y-STR Genetic Diversity of an Idaho Basque population, published in Human Biology.

It was the first DNA study to document the spread of the Basque male chromosome overseas. The Basque people were renowned seafarers.

"The idea is to better understand health risks for Basque people, including an increased incidence of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases," said Josu Zubizarreta, a Boise State graduate who conducted research with the lead author, Greg Hampikian.

Mitochondrial DNA, which reflects a deeper history, was also studied.

Basques are credited with the invention of the rudder. They provided the crew and navigators for Magellan. Basque names are common on antique maps. The Bay of Biscayne is named for them, and many harbors, points and landfalls on the Atlantic Coast of North America are thought to come from the Basque language, which is known as an isolate and is unrelated to other European languages.

Sculpture of Basque sailor, Victorio Macho, Toledo. Travelpod.

Citation
Zubizarreta, Josu; Davis, Michael C.; and Hampikian, Greg (2011) "The Y-STR genetic diversity of an Idaho Basque population, with comparison to European Basques and US Caucasians," Human Biology: Vol. 83: Iss. 6, Article 2.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol83/iss6/2

We always suspected the genetics community of clinging to stale dogmas and being slow to acknowledge emerging new evidence about American Indians. But we did not dream that their officiousness extended to changing the information given by test subjects to bring it into conformity with preconceived conclusions.

Not until we heard Marcy's story.

"Over the years, I've heard complaints that [a DNA testing company] is not really responsive when you have questions about unexpected results," Marcy said. "They usually suggest further testing, which of course, means more revenue to them.

"I've had some major disagreements with [a DNA testing company] over how they list results for mitochondrial haplogroup ancestral origins . . . . I found out they were taking dozens of T2's who had listed their earliest known female ancestor as being from America or the United States, changing this and placing them in the 'unknown' category. They claimed that because our haplogroup was designated European, our ancestors couldn't be from the United States!

"Now this was nonsense, because at the same time, they allowed people to claim other similarly-colonized western countries, like Cuba. It's my opinion that if participants list a country of origin for their earliest known female relative, that should be what is on the web page, not something assigned by [a DNA testing company] because as they told me, it may 'confuse people,' or contradict current scientific data.

"As a consequence [the DNA testing company's] publicly reported ancestral origins has nothing to do with our haplogroup's ancient Cherokee clan mother. The chips should fall where they may."

Now this is not professional behavior on the part of a DNA testing company and it prevents new findings from coming to light.

In a study of 52 individuals claiming direct maternal descent from an American Indian woman, mostly Cherokee, we found that they were unmatched anywhere else except among other participants. Haplogroup T emerged as the largest lineage, followed by U, X, J and H. Similar proportions of these haplogroups were noted in the populations of Egypt, Israel and other parts of the East Mediterranean.

DNA testing companies do a disservice to their customers and to science by failing to call results as they appear without doctoring them. It is time geneticists stopped bringing all American Indians over the Bering Straits and forcing test subjects into the Procrustean bed of outmoded theory.

For more on "anomalous" American Indian haplotypes, visit our Cherokee DNA Studies, now in Phase II testing.

If you think haplogroup testing for Native American DNA is in sad shape, you should look at autosomal testing. It has been practically nonexistent. Even the major 2007 study by Wang et al. has glaring gaps and methodological quandaries(1).

DNA Consultants' newest autosomal product is the Native American DNA Fingerprint Plus based on 21 published studies of Native American population groups as well as informal customer data. Results for many individuals were validated with older haplotyping methodology.

There were data for 3,583 Native Americans available in development of the product. These test results came from articles published between 1997 and 2009. They included individuals identifying with tribes or nations as follows:

Apache
Athabaskan
Huichol
Inupiat
Kichwa
Lumbee
Navajo
Salishan
Yupik

Alaska
Arizona
Brazil
British Columbia
Colombia
Ecuador
Florida
Guatemala
Mexico
Michigan
Minnesota
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Ontario
Saskatchewan

Nothing labeled as Cherokee -- the largest Native group in the U.S., with more than 400,000 representatives -- has ever been tested. Anecdotally, people of Cherokee descent often receive matches to North Carolina or Michigan Native Americans. The reason for the latter matchup is obscure. North Carolina as the Cherokee's original homeland makes a lot more sense.

1. Wang, S. et al. (2007). “Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans.” PLoS Genetics 3/11 (with good bibliog.):  http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0030185.

A recent comparison of medieval mitochondrial DNA from a Byzantine cemetery with modern populations in Southwest Turkey shows what we have assumed in our population analyses of atDNA 2.0. The integration of historical with archaeological information proves that the little South Anatolian town of Sagalassos has a clearly structured Balkan/Greek maternal population with some ancient Persians and Italians in the mix but no Central Asian (Turkic) contributions discernible. The inference is that when the Turks conquered Anatolia and eventually took control of the Byzantine capital (modern-day Constantinople) they remained largely a ruling class with little penetration into the ancient settlements scattered through Turkey. Even though the general populace accepted their conquerors' religion, Islam, their bedrock DNA did not significantly alter, at least not in the female lines. 

Claudio Ottoni et al., "Mitochondrial Analysis of a Byzantine Population Reveals the Differential Impact of Multiple Historical Events in South Anatolia," Eur. J. of Hum. Genet. (2011) 19:571-76.

Abstract
The archaeological site of Sagalassos is located in Southwest Turkey, in the western part of the Taurus mountain range. Human occupation of its territory is attested from the late 12th millennium BP up to the 13th century AD. By analysing the mtDNA variation in 85 skeletons from Sagalassos dated to the 11th–13th century AD, this study attempts to reconstruct the genetic signature potentially left in this region of Anatolia by the many civilizations, which succeeded one another over the centuries until the mid-Byzantine period (13th century BC). Authentic ancient DNA data were determined from the control region and some SNPs in the coding region of the mtDNA in 53 individuals. Comparative analyses with up to 157 modern populations allowed us to reconstruct the origin of the mid-Byzantine people still dwelling in dispersed hamlets in Sagalassos, and to detect the maternal contribution of their potential ancestors. By integrating the genetic data with historical and archaeological information, we were able to attest in Sagalassos a significant maternal genetic signature of Balkan/Greek populations, as well as ancient Persians and populations from the Italian peninsula. Some contribution from the Levant has been also detected, whereas no contribution from Central Asian population could be ascertained.

In a paper to be delivered at the American Marketing Association's meeting in Washington in June, Elizabeth C. Hirschman estimates that the number of people who have purchased a DNA test now exceeds 1.5 million. Her work suggests that the value of the market (excluding paternity testing) in 2011 will reach nearly $150 million in sales. That seems like too big an industry to escape government oversight, and it's true that several scientists have targeted the direct-to-the-consumer DNA testing business for criticism, particularly personal genomics companies like 23andme.

Before another academic grant gets written to send out another industry questionnaire, however, marketing professionals and public policy analysts ought to have a look at Hirschman's new case study, destined, we think, to become a classic. "Altruistic Economics and Consumer Cooperatives in the DNA Marketspace" sketches a vibrant picture of DNA test takers busy following up on their results in social networking sites like DNA Communities and even joining in the design process for product improvements by the leaders in the industry. No unhappy campers there!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Rather than mount yet another policy making roundtable, would-be regulators should just order some of the DNA tests available from today's leading companies and judge for themselves how accurate or valuable or harmful they are. That makes a lot more sense than writing another food review for a restaurant they do not intend to patronize, or for a cuisine that is not to their taste.

The AMA's Marketing and Public Policy Conference is the premier national and international event for marketing academics, public policy makers, and marketing practitioners interested in social and public policy.

Another point made by the paper is that "The industry has completed the introduction, early growth stages and consolidation phase of its life cycle . . . . It is a mature field facing few new technology thresholds, and it is still very much confined to the United States, Canada and England." That having been said, it may be too late to regulate the industry. It seems to be doing fine all by itself. Like the pharmaceutical and computer industries, the DNA marketspace is an American phenomenon we should all just basically let thrive and be proud of.

Altruistic Economics and Consumer Cooperatives in the DNA Marketspace

 

A blogger on Eupedia's genetics forum has deduced the haplogroups of many European kings and queens from living descendants who have been tested. It has long been known that mtDNA haplogroup H dominated the lines of Europe's aristocracies, while Y chromosomal R1b was the most common male lineage. Prince Phillip exhibits the stereotypical genes in this regard. More interesting than the royal personages listed are those that haven't yet made the list, like Elizabeth I or Charlemagne. It would be interesting to know what the mitochondrial DNA was of Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn or what Charlemagne's male lineage was.

One fascinating observation of the blogger is, "All kings of France supposedly belonged to haplogroup G2a3 (Y-DNA)." G2a makes up 5 to 10% of Mediterranean Europe but is rare in Northern Europe. It is believed to have originated with metalworking peoples from the Caucasus or Anatolia who accompanied the R1b-dominant Indo-Europeans on their conquest of Europe in the 3rd millennium BCE.

See "Geographic Spread and Ethnic Origins of European Haplogroups - Eupedia."

I got a holiday present from my wife of an unusual little book titled On the Trail of Spider Woman. Petroglyphs, Pictographs, and Myths of the Southwest, by Carol Patterson-Rudolph (Santa Fe:  Ancient City Press, 1997). Putting this intriguing study together with a travel book by David Hatcher Childress, my son and I took a 4-day road trip into the homeland of the Indians credited with having the first civilization in the Southwest, a settled town life marked by desert agriculture, canals, pottery, baskets, ballcourts, plazas and adobe pueblos, pithouses and kivas. Previous occupants of the area were non-sedentary hunter-gatherers considered to be "paleo-Indians."

We visited Painted Rock Petroglyph Site outside Gila Bend, in the middle of nowhere, and ended the trip in the barren sands outside Phoenix, where we began it, visiting the Hohokam Pima National Archeological Monument, also known as Snaketown. The former is little seen, and the latter cannot seen, because the Pima (now Gila River Indians) had the ballcourt and other ruins reburied by backhoes in the 1970s. The caretakers of this declared national treasure decided not to open it to anyone to view or visit because of its "sensitive" nature. There are no signs, no roads, nothing left above ground.

Overview of pecked records and markings of Hohokam, 200 B.C.-A.D. 1300, on granite outcropping called Painted Rock in South Central Arizona.

At Painted Rock, the first mystery we pondered was why it was called "painted" rock when there is no paint. Petroglyphs are produced by pecking away the dark desert varnish to make a negative image on the underlying lighter rock. We wondered if it had anything to do with the Paint People, or Phoenicians, Kanawah Indians of the East Coast or Cherokee and Saponi Paint Clans.

The second mystery was the abundance of snake imagery. Famously, snakes in Indian tradition stand for boats and water. We noticed a Corn Cross, the symbol of the Feathered Serpent or Quetzlcoatl religion, supposedly introduced into Mexico from both the East and the West by white, bearded strangers in ships, who brought rule by laws and numerous arts of civilization and banned human sacrifice.

The third thing we remarked upon were the many Great Goddess or Earth Mother or birthing/fertility symbols. Such places were probably shrines where women came to be blessed and get married and give birth. Sun Park in Hopiland has numerous hemispherical carvings about two inches wide where people ground out minerals to eat. These cupmarks or cupoles at petroglyph sites puzzled archeologists until an important article in a scholarly journal clarified their meaning as part of the worldwide phenomenon of pica (pronounced "pie-ka"), "the desire to ingest nonfood substances such as rock powder, clay, chalk, dirt, and other material by some humans, especially pregnant women" (Kevin L. Callahan, "Pica, Geophagy, and Rock-Art in the Eastern United States," in The Rock-Art of Eastern North America, ed. Carol Diaz-Granados and James R. Duncan, Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2004, p. 65.

Neolithic Cupmarks in Kh. Umm El-Umdan, Israel. 

In general, petroglyphs are ignored both by archeology and anthropology, and their study is a no man's land. Sun Park has a birthing cave and birthing stone. Canyon de Chelly has the most photographed Mother Earth rock formation in the world, Spider Rock, a chthonic monument discussed on page 83 of the Spider Woman book by Patterson-Rudolph.

Who Were the Hohokam?

There were also clear images of horses, riders, people praying, spirals, axis mundi (center of the earth) symbols like the iron butterfly and cross, labyrinths, bilobed axes, irrigation plans, horned beasts, felines, palaces or villages and warriors with spears and shields. We searched in vain for anomalous depictions of whales, elephants and deep water fish, found at other similar sites, but the sun was sinking and we did not have time to make a thorough inspection of the motifs. There is a famous petroglyph of a whale at Old Oraibi.

The name Ho-ho-kam is usually explained as meaning "Those Who Are Departed," but such an etymology is more a gloss than a literal translation of its meaning and origin. Like many words in the Hopi, Zuni, Pima and Azteco-Utan languages in general it is composed of South Semitic elements. In Egyptian, it literally means "Sea Peoples" or "Foreigners." The historic Sea Peoples came from Asia Minor and once threatened to conquer the Egyptian empire. The Philistines and Phoenicians are related to them. They were remarkable for their feather bonnets and, like their relatives the Cretans (whose language also came from Asia Minor), for a long-protracted continuance of Mother Goddess worship down into the Bronze Age.

Haplogroup B is the signature lineage of certain Indians in North America. Its ultimate source is Southeast Asia (not Mongolia, as has been suggested for the other three classic Native American haplogroups A, C and D), whence it took multiple circum- or trans-Pacific migratory routes to the Americas (Eschleman et al. 2004). It has high frequencies in Polynesia, which was settled from Southeast Asia, and among the Western Indians of the U.S. such as the Hopi, Zuni (77%), Anasazi (78%), Yuman, and Jemez Pueblo (89%). It is also found in frequencies approaching 70% in the Cherokee and Chickasaw.

We believe Spider Woman is simply an aspect of the Stone Age Great Goddess worshiped by those who came from Southeast Asia through Polynesia and helped colonized the American Southwest. She is the same as the Earth Mother. As in other cultures, she was replaced by sky and sun deities and male hierarchies. But her religion seems to have persisted in the Hohokam, Cherokee and Hopi tribes in a similar fashion to the survival of her cult in the Cretans, Phoenicians and Sea Peoples. 

According to Hopi and other traditions, at the end of the last age, the Mother Goddess ceased to be the leader of the people in their wanderings and went back "under the sea" to the east and west whence she and they had emerged. We can only infer from this that Spider Woman, as she was called in Asia and the Pacific, and the Great Goddess, as she was known in the Old World of the Middle East, relinquished her role as supreme deity to the new male pantheons and withdrew across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to the distant origins of civilization outside the Americas. Ironically, her memory survived better among the Indian nations than in the war-torn empires and materialistic cultures that dominate world history elsewhere. Indian societies today exhibit rare examples of matriarchy as opposed to patriarchy.

Using mitochondrial DNA to test the hypothesis of a European post-glacial human recolonization from the Franco-Cantabrian refuge

O García^1,4, R Fregel^2,4, J M Larruga², V Álvarez³, I Yurrebaso¹, V M Cabrera² and A M González²

Abstract

It has been proposed that the distribution patterns and coalescence ages found in Europeans for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups V, H1 and H3 are the result of a post-glacial expansion from a Franco-Cantabrian refuge that recolonized central and northern areas. In contrast, in this refined mtDNA study of the Cantabrian Cornice that contributes 413 partial and 9 complete new mtDNA sequences, including a large Basque sample and a sample of Asturians, no experimental evidence was found to support the human refuge-expansion theory. In fact, all measures of gene diversity point to the Cantabrian Cornice in general and the Basques in particular, as less polymorphic for V, H1 and H3 than other southern regions in Iberia or in Central Europe. Genetic distances show the Cantabrian Cornice is a very heterogeneous region with significant local differences. The analysis of several minor subhaplogroups, based on complete sequences, also suggests different focal expansions over a local and peninsular range that did not affect continental Europe. Furthermore, all detected clinal trends show stronger longitudinal than latitudinal profiles. In Northern Iberia, it seems that the highest diversity values for some haplogroups with Mesolithic coalescence ages are centred on the Mediterranean side, including Catalonia and South-eastern France.

Mitochondrial testing specialists better get busy revising their haplogroup theories! Another Western European, Atlantic-facing prejudice has been disproved.

Possum Creek Stone and Anomalous Cherokee DNA Point to Eastern Mediterranean Origins

In memoriam Gloria Farley

Donald N. Yates

DNA Consultants

Keynote address for Ancient American History and Archeology Conference, Sandy, Utah, April 2, 2010

SUMMARY  Three examples of North American rock art are discussed and placed in the context of ancient Greek and Hebrew civilization. The Red Bird Petroglyphs are compared with Greek and Hebrew coins and the Bat Creek Stone. The Possum Creek Stone discovered by Gloria Farley is identified as a Greek athlete’s victory pedestal. The Thruston Stone is interpreted as a record of the blending of Greek, Cherokee, Native American, Egyptian and Hebrew civilization. Keetoowah Society traditions, as captured in The Vision of Eloh’, are adduced to confirm a general outline of the origins of the Cherokee people in a Ptolemaic Greek trans-Pacific expedition joining pre-arriving Greeks, Jews and Phoenicians in the Ohio Valley around 100 c.e.  Recent DNA investigations showing Egyptian, Jewish and Phoenician female lineages and the Y chromosome of Old Testament Priests among the Cherokee are also touched upon. Greek words and customs in the Cherokee are reviewed as time permits. Slide projector requested.

A cave entrance overlooking the Redbird River, a tributary of the South Fork of the Kentucky River in Clay County, Kentucky in the Daniel Boone National Forest, has inscriptions which according to Kenneth B. Tankersley of the University of Cincinnati display a nineteenth-century example of writing in the Cherokee syllabary. A local resident (Burchell) recognizes Greek writing in one inscription (called Christian Monogram #2) but his reading is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. Evaluation by experts in Greek and Semitic epigraphy identifies two distinct inscriptions, one in Greek and one in Hebrew.  They appear to be contemporaneous with the Bat Creek Stone unearthed in the 1889 excavation of a tomb in East Tennessee by Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institution.

Another record of Greek-speaking people in ancient America is the Possum Creek Stone, discovered by Gloria Farley in Oklahoma in the 1970s. It is discussed by her in Volume 2 of In Plain Sight as proof that the man history knows as Sequoyah did not invent the Cherokee syllabary.  The inscription can be read as Greek, HO-NI-KA-SA or ‘o nikasa, i.e. “This is the one who takes the prize of victory,” a common inscription for the pedestal upon which victors were crowned at athletic games.  The use is Homeric, and the spelling Doric.

A third piece of evidence helps fill in the background of the arrival of Greeks and their intermarriage with Asiatic and other Indians in North America. In 1870, an engraved 19 x 15 inch limestone tablet was uncovered in a mound excavation on Rocky Creek near Castalian Springs in Sumner County, Tennessee (see Ancient American, vol. 12, no. 77). Dating to an earlier time than its Mississipian Period context, it commemorates a peace treaty between the Cherokee and Shawnee. The Cherokee chief wears a horse-hair crested helmet and carries the spear and shield of a Greek hoplite. His Shawnee adversary clasps hands in a wedding ceremony with a Cherokee woman who bears wampum belts as a pledge of peace, has her hair in a maidenly bun, wears a Middle Eastern-style plaid kilt, and displays a large star of David. In the Red Record or Walam Olum, we learn that before crossing the Mississippi, somewhere along the south bank of the Missouri, the Algonquians or Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indians), who are later allied with the Cherokee, encounter a foreign tribe they call the Stonys. Cherokee legends about Stone-coat demonstrate that the original Cherokee had metal armor and weapons. DNA studies confirm a mixture of “anomalous” East Mediterranean mitochondrial lineages such as Egyptian T, Greek U and Phoenician X with “standard” American Indian haplogroups A, B, C and D in the Cherokee and certain other Eastern Woodlands Indians.

To sum up, the Red Bird Petroglyph is a Greek inscription from the 2nd to 3rd century c.e., not a crude Cherokee scratching of around 1800 as announced recently by the Archeological Institute of America and the New York Times. It occurs above what is, in all likelihood, an inscription in Maccabean-era Hebrew. The Sequoyan syllabary for which these Greek and Hebrew inscriptions were mistaken originated in the Greek world of the Bronze Age along with other syllabaries like Linear A, Linear B and Cypro-Minoan. The Cherokee language, which today is Iroquoian, is the result of a relexification process in the distant past. It contains many relics of words of Greek origin, especially in the area of government, military terminology, mythology, athletics and ritual. Cherokee music also reflects Greek origins.  The Cherokee Indians are, quite literally, the Greeks of Native America.

Possum Creek Stone and Anomalous Cherokee DNA Point to East Mediterranean Origins (PPT)

Greek Words and Customs in Cherokee

The bombshell arrived with the May 7, 2010 issue of Science Magazine. Entitled "A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome," it presented the years-long attempt of an international team of scientists to derive DNA from ancient female Neanderthal bones and determine if there was any genetic overlap with humans. The news was so sensational that the journal made the original scientific report and all collateral materials free to everyone, along with a podcast, multimedia presentation "The Neandertal Genome" and slew of links and forums for comments.

Read the original press release from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. It was embargoed for May 6, 2010, 8 p.m.

 

Svante Pääbo’s Neanderthal research group from left to right: Adrian Briggs, Hernán Burbano, Matthias Meyer, Anja Buchholz, Jesse Dabney, Kay Prüfer, Svante Pääbo, Janet Kelso, Tomislav Maričić, Qiaomei Fu, Udo Stenzel, Johannes Krause and Martin Kircher. (Copyright: Frank Vinken)

Some background

Discovered in a quarry in Germany in 1856, 40,000-year-old Neanderthal man became the first recognized early human fossil. The debate immediately began whether Neanderthals were a separate species or sub-species of Homo sapiens. German language orthographic reforms rendered the spelling of the name Neandertal in the twentieth century, although most people even today prefer to stick with the th of the original word. Neanderthals are named after the Neander Valley (German thal or tal) in which they first came to light.

More and more of them turned up over the years:  in Belgium (1886), a nearly complete skeleton in southern France (1908), Israel (then-Palestine, 1930) and Iraq (1953). The first ambitious genetic work was a partial sequencing of their mitochondrial DNA based on highly degraded specimens: Krings et al., Cell 90, 19 (1997). A second mitDNA sequence was achieved in 2000. The complete mtDNA sequence came in 2008:  Green et al., Cell 134, 416 (2008).

In the meantime, Neanderthals were found to have red hair and fair skin, body paint, customs, societies, rituals and art. They used fire, tools and weapons. They hunted bison, horses and other large animals and made bread of acorn meal. With their short arms and weak shoulder sockets, however, they probably could not throw spears. Before they were conquered by their smaller human cousins, they had colonized an area extending from Spain to Western Siberia and the Middle East. They were acclimated to northern Europe's icy temperatures and flourished especially before and during the last Ice Age. Then, suddenly, about 30,000 years ago, the fossil record goes silent. Their last holdout appears to have been in Spain.

Our picture of Neanderthals is likely to change radically now that we know they were among ancestors of ours, not a dead-end, primitive race. Some writers had already speculated, in fact, that Neanderthals were more advanced in many ways than their rivals, Cro-Magnon Man. Certainly, their religion was highly adumbrated. Some carried Venus figures on necklaces. According to the author of The Neanderthal's Necklace, Juan Luis Arsuaga (co-director of the World Heritage Site Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain), at one burial in Russia, a 60-year-old adult had 3,000 beads of drilled mammoth ivory sewn onto his clothes. A boy in the same burial wore a belt decorated with 250 arctic fox canines. There were also shells, armbands, head ornaments, bracelets, pendants, assegais, ceremonial staffs and other artifacts made of bone, antler, ivory and stone (p. 294).

The blockbuster draft of the Neanderthal genome just published noted genes linked to cognitive abilities, geo-spatial skills, language and motor coordination as well as strength, reproductive advantages and (what we knew already) cold adaptation. Much attention is likely to focus on the Neanderthal's signature occipital bun, noticed in isolated or vestigial populations like the Berbers, Saami, Canary Islands, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines and Melungeons. These populations probably preserved greater proportions of Neanderthal admixture than others.

Because the genetic legacy of Neanderthals (so far) has not been detected in the mitochondrial record, it is believed that gene flow came from males mating with human females. No male Neanderthal lines survive -- not surprisingly. Only autosomal DNA reveals the Neanderthal contribution to human populations.