In 2020 a high-coverage genome from Chagyrskaya, Siberia, didn’t show inbreeding between parents, but came from a reproductive population just as small as the relatively nearby Altai woman’s, averaging about 60 individuals for many generations. In stark contrast, the earliest H. sapiens genome from Ust’-Ishim has more diverse DNA than any Neanderthal sampled so far. This implies that the interconnectedness of H. sapiens’ social networks may well have been different right from the start.
