Ancient DNA, or DNA extracted from long dead organisms, has proven invaluable for providing insights into prehistoric events that would otherwise not be accessible. Even though genomic data have been recovered from more than 10,000 ancient humans to date, relatively few genomes have been obtained from the time period when modern humans started expanding out-of-Africa and Neandertals disappeared. In this talk, I will outline some of the key findings from our recent work aimed at gaining a better understanding of Neandertal-human interactions across Eurasia, and how research into our closest ancestors and close relatives – modern humans and Neandertals alike – has the potential to advance our understanding of what makes modern humans who we are today.
Mateja Hajdinjak is a molecular biologist using ancient DNA to study human evolutionary history. She completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, under supervision of Dr. Matthias Meyer and Prof. Dr. Svante Pääbo, recovering and analysing genome-wide data of some of the last Neandertals and some of the earliest modern humans in Europe. As a Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellow she then went to the Ancient Genomics Laboratory of Dr. Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London, United Kingdom, where she continued tracing origins of modern human ancestry using ancient DNA, with a special focus on ancient hunter gatherer groups across Africa and west Eurasia. She is currently a Max Planck Research Group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Christian von Savigny