There are two predominant models of modern human origins: multiregional evolution and recent African replacement. Multiregional evolution posits that the evolution of contemporary peoples occurred around the globe, with archaic populations such as the Neandertals contributing locally in their geographic regions [4]. This model predicts that Neandertals will share significant genetic variation with Europeans to the exclusion of other populations. Recent African replacement suggests that contemporary humans owe their heritage to a small African population that spread around the world replacing archaic populations with little to no interbreeding [5]. This model predicts that Neandertals will be equally distantly related to all contemporary human populations.

We propose a third alternative. The paleontological and archaeological records suggest that modern humans and Neandertals overlapped in the Eastern Mediterranean region around 100 thousand years ago during a time when the African faunal zone extended temporarily into the Middle East. The range of modern humans then likely contracted back into Africa, severing contact with Neandertals, before finally expanding their range out of Africa around 50 thousand years ago [11]. Admixture may not have been possible during this time because a southern route out of Africa through the Arabian peninsula [12] would not have put the populations in contact. Any admixture would have occurred prior to the expansion of modern humans out of Africa between East Africans and Neandertals (Figure 1C). If this is correct, Neandertal genes will be found at low frequency in East Africans and perhaps others. These low-frequency Neandertal genes may then have been pushed to high frequency or fixation in the out of Africa populations through the iterated founder effect associated with range expansions [13].

• The occurrence of 3.8% South Asian in Romanians may signify its Roma population. Indeed, almost all of this comes from a 25% South Asian individual, almost certainly a Roma.
• The small African component in Spaniards which was revealed in a previous K=8 run turns out to be East African (0.5%) rather than West African (0.1%). If this holds up in larger sets then it might signify that its origin is from East African admixed populations from the east, rather than Sub-Saharan Africans.
• The multiplicity of ancestries of the Uygur is made evident, in agreement with the extensive craniometric and genetic data on prehistoric and extant populations from the area.
• The proportion of the two East Eurasian components in Turkic populations is interesting. It seems that the earliest departures from the Turkic homeland (such as the Chuvash and Yakut) have a predominance of the NE Asian component, the Anatolian Turks are intermediate, and the Uygurs, the only ones to have stayed close to the homeland, have experienced an increase in the E Asian component.
• The absence of the West African component in Ethiopians is striking. Here are the individual results for Ethiopians, illustrating the variability of the Southwest African vs. East African components. The Ethiopian sample consists of a number different ethnic groups of the country, some of which (like the Amharas) are of Western Eurasian linguistic origin.

a European-origin component in the composite Ashkenazi Jewish gene pool that he happens to share.

According to his observations, the “overlords” were characterized by Turanid, Uralian and Pamir race elements and also by certain long-headed components. The “middle layer” or “warriors’ layer”, however, showed an anthropological profile distinctly different from that of the overlords. It was essentially constituted by Mediterraneans, Nordoids (who might also have been tall robust Mediterraneans) and Pamir component while the absence of Turanid and Uralian race characteristics was remarkable. As regards the third layer, the so-called “common folk”, they were dominated, just as the middle layer was, by Mediterranean and Nordoid elements but, in addition, the Cromagnoid ones were also significant.

After the execution of Louis XVI in January 21st, 1793, eyewitnesses stated that many people from the crowd dipped their handkerchiefs in the king’s blood and kept these objects as mementos [8]. An Italian family has owned for more than a hundred years – as demonstrated by a letter addressed to the director of the Muse/ e Carnavalet in Paris, January 31st, 1900 – a dessicated gourd that presumably contained one of these handkerchiefs.

the majority of the cloned sequences (87%) showed a rare N1b haplotype, with the substitutions 16093C-16145A-16176(G)-16223T. The same results were found in Bologna by direct sequencing, along with another substitution (16390G), not included in the amplicon generated in Barcelona. The haplotype found at the mtDNA HVR2(73G, 151T, 152C, 189G, 194T, 195C, 263G and 315.1C), is consistent with the N1b haplotype from the HVR1, although the substitutions 151T, 189G and 194T are not described in the current N1b dataset lineages. We interpret these three substitutions as additional, undescribed modifications of a N1b haplotype.

At present it is not possible to prove genetically that the sample really belongs to the king Louis XVI. One possibility would be to extract a new sample from the dry heart attributed to the Dauphin Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI, preserved at the Basilique Saint-Denis in Paris, and compare both Y-chromosome profiles. Owing to the fact that the Y-chromosome profile found is not present in our current genetic databases such as YHRD, a potential match would directly authenticate the studied blood sample.

The variance of the empirical TMRCAs is larger than the variance predicted by three of the four different models of human evolution (see Figure 2 and Supplementary Table 3), and this large variance has been interpreted as the result of archaic sub-structure in Africa (Harding and McVean 2004). Indeed, the Multiple Archaic Populations' (scenario 2) shows similar variance of TMRCAs as the empirical data, but the inflated variance of the empirical TMRCA estimates can also be due to variation in mutation or recombination rate across the 40 sequence-regions (McVean et al. 2004).

The models of human evolution typically predict older TMRCAs compared to the estimated 170,000 years for mtDNA (Ingman et al. 2000) and the upper estimate of 100,000 years for the Y-chromosome (Tang et al. 2002; Wilder et al. 2004; Shi et al. 2010). For mtDNA, a TMRCA of 170,000 years is within the range of values predicted by the `Multiple Archaic Populations' scenario (P(TMRCA less than 170,000) = 0.21), but the mitochondrial TMRCA estimate is diffi cult to reconcile with the remaining three scenarios (P less than 4x10<sup>-2</sup>). For the Y-chromosome, a TMRCA of 100,000 years is clearly at odds with three of the models (P less than 6x10-4), but for the `Multiple Archaic Populations' scenario with archaic African admixture, the proportion of simulated gene trees with TMRCAs younger than 100,000 years is larger than for the other three models, albeit quite small (P = 1.5x10^-2).

Dienekes is wrong about the Neanderthal interbreeding results being explained by African population substructure, , but there are a lot of indications that there was significant substructure. A lot of this involves work that is not yet published: I look forward to seeing the details. Some of what I hear is remarkable.