It is rare enough to note that the two most prestigious scientific journals and hereditary rivals, Nature and Science, agreed to publish two paleogenetic studies simultaneously on Thursday, December 12. They focus on the origin of some 2% of the genome of today's non-African human populations from our extinct cousin, the Neanderthal. Both point to a date of 45,000 years, a few thousand years before the disappearance of Homo neanderthalensis.

While the two journals decided to coordinate their publications, it was undoubtedly because the first authors of the studies, and many of their colleagues, work at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig). This Mecca of ancient DNA was founded by Svante Pääbö, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology (2022). It was he who first made the Neanderthal genome speak, revealing in 2010 that part of our genetic heritage bore the traces of interbreeding with them. Two years later, he attempted to date them, proposing a broad range from 47,000 to 65,000 years ago.

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