It is well-known that the 2022 Nobel Prize was won by Dr. Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist, for his studies on human evolution. But why are these studies so important, and how can his discoveries be put to practical use? This article from the Lancet includes some answers to these questions. Namely, Dr. Pääbo’s work examines a fundamental question of human physiology: what is it that makes us human?

“The award recognizes the achievements for sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal and discovering a new species of hominin, the Denisovans. In doing so, Pääbo has opened up conversations around arguably the most fundamental question of physiology: what is it that makes us human? It was around 70 000 years ago that Homo sapiens started to migrate out of Africa. The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) had done so 300 000 years earlier, settling in small groups across western Asia and Europe. The Neanderthals remained there, at a more or less fixed level of development, until they went extinct 40 000 years ago. H sapiens, the sole surviving hominin, showed greater ambition. They crossed open water, tried their hand at figurative art, and repeatedly established complex societies characterized by continual innovation. Furthermore, as Pääbo proved, during the thousands of years in which H sapiens lived alongside H neanderthalensis outside Africa, they interbred. 1–4% of the DNA of today’s European and Asian populations originated in the Neanderthals. “You can reconstruct approximately 40% of the Homo neanderthalensis genome in modern-day Homo sapiens; in a sense, the Neanderthals never died.”

According to Dr. Pääbo, “I never imagined that we would be talking about the Neanderthals”, he said. “Sometimes I have to take a step back and remind myself of how cool this all is. We are comparing modern-day human beings at a molecular level with extinct forms of humans that walked the earth tens of thousands of years ago.”1

You can read the full text here.

References

  1. Burki, T. (2022a). Pääbo wins Nobel Prize for work on human evolution. The Lancet, 400(10360), 1295. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(22)01981-x

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