https://www.sci.news/genetics/west-africans-dna-archaic-hominin-08123.html
The scientists focused on four contemporary West African populations: Yoruba from Ibadan, Esan from Ni geria, Mende from Sier ra Leone, and Gambian.
They found differences that could be best explained by introgression by an unknown archaic hominin whose ancestors split off from the human family tree before Neanderthals.
The data suggest this introgression may have happened relatively recently, or it may have involved multiple populations of archaic human, hinting at complex and long-lived interactions between anatomically modern humans and various populations of archaic hominins.
“Combining our results across the West African populations, we estimate that the archaic population split from the ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans 360,000 years to 1.02 million years ago, and subsequently introgressed into the ancestors of present-day Africans 0-124,000 years ago, contributing 2 to 19% of their ancestry,” the authors said.
Dr. Durvasula and Dr. Sankararaman also examined the frequencies of archaic DNA segments to investigate whether natural selection could have shaped the distribution of archaic genetic variants.
“We found 33 loci with an archaic segment frequency of over 50% in Yoruba and 37 loci in Mende,” they said.
B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-but... I thought race was a social construct?