I recently read an interesting book , "The seven daughters of Eve"  by Bryan Sykes

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393020185/qid=1035483341/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-2402258-8723359?v=glance&n=507846#product-details  

It describes the use of  a novel  "mitochondrial DNA analysis"  - specifically in a study of the ancestry of europeans. 
The result is that  80 % of all europeans  are descendants of ancient  european hunter-gatherer populations -
dating back as far as 40000 years.  The remaining 20 % are descendant of  farmers , immigrating into europe from the middle east
about 10000 years ago.   The neanderthals are not directly related to modern humans (common ancestor several 100000 years ago).

Most europeans have "european ice age ancestors"  -  and  might therefore be  genetically adapted to ice-age  environments.  


Esben

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hilary McClure" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 4:47 PM
Subject: Re: [P-F] Megafauna Encounters? Re: Cordain correspondence


> Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
> >
> > If we want to look at africa, as the probable home of homo up to the year
> > 40,000 I'm waiting for a list of fat and abundant animals.
> 
> The figures I've seen are 60,000 years ago into Australia, 40 to 50,000
> years ago into Europe. But anyway, the "replacement" (or pure "out of
> africa") theory of human evolution does not seem to be conquering the
> other theories. Many people feel there is some continuity of ancestry
> from homo erectus through older homo sapiens and neanderthal to modern
> homo sapiens in different regions, Europe and Asia, either through
> partial replacement (new migrants interbreeding with older occupants) or
> through parallel evolution with small amounts of inter-regional
> cross-breeding. That might mean that the populations that had a long
> adaptation to cold megafauna subsistence weren't wiped away by the new
> wave from Africa, but did manage to contribute genes to us modern
> humans, at least in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and America. I've
> also read that ice-age population bottlnecks could have accelerated the
> evolutionary progress or adaptation in Europe by weeding out genetic
> traits unsuited to those conditions.
> 
> Hilary
>