No evidence for unknown archaic ancestry in South Asia

Abstract

Genomic studies have documented a contribution of archaic Neanderthals and Denisovans to non-Africans1,2. Recently Mondal et al.3 published a major dataset--the largest whole genome sequencing study of diverse South Asians to date--including 60 mainland groups and 10 indigenous Andamanese. They reported analyses claiming that nearly all South Asians harbor ancestry from an unknown archaic human population that is neither Neanderthal nor Denisovan. However, the statistics cited in support of this conclusion do not replicate in other data sets, and in fact contradict the conclusion.\n\nThe main evidence cited by Mondal et al. is statistics suggesting that indigenous Andamanese and mainland Indian groups share fewer alleles with sub-Saharan Africans than they do with Europeans and East Asians; such statistics have previously been reported in Australasians, for whom they represent key evide ...