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Humans are said to have originated in Africa some two to four hundred thousand years ago and started spreading to the Middle East approximately 70,000 years ago. Our research group compared genomes from ancient and modern humans and demonstrated that people in our modern world carry 1% to 2 % of the genomes of Neanderthals, people of Mainland Asia carry approximately 0.2% of the genomes of Denisovans, and about 5% of the genomes of Denisovans are mixed in with those of Papua New Guinean and Aboriginal Australians. Studies of ancient genomes can lead to significant medical discoveries. For example, there is a genetic variant for gene encoding a progesterone receptor and that variant exists outside Africa but can hardly be found anywhere in Africa. A variant that is associated with preterm birth has been identified in Neanderthals and Denisovans. We used the UK BioBank to investigate why the variant associated with the risk of preterm birth is inherited and found that the variant could also decrease the risk
