For the most part, [the DNA we inherited from Neanderthals] has been detrimental…[Neanderthal DNA] has been blamed for increasing risk of depression, Type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, lupus,allergies, addiction and more.
But geneticists [from the University of California and University of Torino, Turin, Italy] Fernando Racimo, Davide Marnetto and Emilia Huerta-Sanchez wanted to find evidence that our archaic inheritance actually does us some good. They went looking for instances of adaptive introgression — a phenomenon in which a newly introduced piece of genetic material is so beneficial that it quickly radiates out into the entire population.
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Their results…suggest that humans have inherited helpful genetic variants associated with fat storage, respiration, skin pigmentation, liver function, immune response and keratin production.
These scraps of DNA come from both Neanderthals and Denisovans, another hominid known only from a few remains found in Russia.
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For example, the [Neanderthal] genes associated with immunity may have helped Homo sapiens resist the new pathogens they encountered as they spread around the globe.
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