Some gene-based estimates put the Neanderthals’ effective population at a measly 1,000; others claim they hovered at a few thousand at most (one study, for example, calculated that there were effectively fewer than 3,500 females). Two hypotheses might account for these results: that the population was indeed that low, even at its peak, or that the population was perhaps larger but had been decreasing for a very long time. In either case, the Neanderthals were always on the decline; their extinction seemed to have been foretold from the beginning.
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“If there were really only 1,000 Neanderthals in the whole world,” Rogers said, “it’s hard to believe there would be such a rich fossil record.” But genetic evidence is exactly what [anthropologist Alan] Rogers and his colleagues have now cited to support their claim that the Neanderthals effectively numbered in the tens of thousands. They made their argument in a study published [July] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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The increase in genetic diversity that Rogers and his colleagues found corresponds to a roughly tenfold increase in effective population size. Although there is no way of knowing how many more Neanderthal individuals that number may represent, it could go a long way toward meeting the estimates from the fossil data.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Genetics Spills Secrets From Neanderthals’ Lost History
