Studies by FU Qiaomei at CAS Institute of Paleoanthropology on ancient DNA extracted from 40,000 years old human bones found near Beijing have shown that the „Tianyuan Man“ inherited about as much Neandertal DNA, 4% to 5%, as ancient Europeans and Asians of similar age, and shares SNPs with a 35,000 year old modern human from Belgium. But he doesn’t share it with other ancient humans who lived at roughly the same time in Romania and Siberia—or with living Europeans. This suggests that the Tianyuan Man was not a direct ancestor, but rather a distant cousin, of a founding population in Asia that gave rise to present-day Asians. The finding shows that ancient populations moved around and interbred.

CAS news release, October 13, 2017