The only site that might have gone through ancient DNA analysis might be Boxgrove in England. But it seems that nothing was published and I also don't know the result...

Thanks for the response, Yaming. However, is the Boxgrove site not significantly older than the Neanderthal era? I thought that activity there was primarily around the 600K BP point? Are you involved in any of the other DNA analysis work of Neanderthals that I know is going on at the Max Planck?

There is, however, the site in north-west Wales - Pontnewydd - which apparently yield a tooth and part of a jawbone of a young boy, dated to about 230K years BP, and thought to be Neanderthal. Presumably you are not aware of any genetic analysis being done on this?

I simply checked our list of neanderthals and early modern human bones we have in the lab and Boxgrove is the only matierial we have from British Isles. I'm not sure whether the other ancient DNA labs have tried any.

According to literature, Boxfrove is dated as 500kya, which is already too early for ancient DNA analysis, not to mention a 600kya bone. The DNA preservation is usually very low in such old bones. The most hopeful materials should be less than 100ka (in normal burial condition, which means those from amber and polar areas are not included).

Of coarse we would like to try those bones that are not so promising. Who knows what's going to come out. Do you have any access to these bones you mentioned?

Very useful reply Yaming. Thanks. I am afraid to say that I do not have access to any Neanderthal bones, mainly since I live in Africa! In Tanzania, in fact. My other major handicap is that my professional work is on viruses of crops and the insect vectors that transmit them. With the DNA revolution, however, it's amazing to see how many of the approaches are similar, and we use mtDNA sequencing to study phylogenetic relationships between whitefly genotypes. Interestingly, whiteflies also have an 'Out of Africa' story, much like that of early hominins and H. sapiens. Learning more about pre-history is more of a hobby than a job for me. That said, as you probably know, Tanzania has some pretty special prehistoric sites, including the very well know Olduvai Gorge, and if I had time, there would probably be the potential to follow up on these.

In order to find out more about ancient remains from the British Isles, I suppose that I should probably contact some of the scientists that have been directly involved, although your lab seems to be at the forefront of a lot of the exciting new sequencing work on Neanderthals. Which other labs are doing similar things?

Actually, I have a little secret doubt in my heart about this out of Africa theory. I always think that there are so many hypothesis behind that the theory itself if not convincing enough. It's kind of enlightening to know that other organism also have a similar story on the maternal side. I think maybe we'll find more similar stories on other organisms if we pay attention. Maybe ten years later we'll discover that this out-of-Africa history is happening to all the organisms and we find out this fancinating story might just be a consequence of bias in analysis. Just a little bit imagination...

back to the original topic. I don't know so much about the other ancient DNA labs . All that I know is that there is one in Russia, in China, in Dublin, in Harvard, in Tubingen and maybe also in MIT(not sure), perhaps Sweden, too. If you are very interested, I think you might wanna ask those from Dublin (University College Dublin) because it is located in British Isles itself.

"the site in north-west Wales - Pontnewydd - which apparently yield a tooth and part of a jawbone of a young boy, dated to about 230K years BP, and thought to be Neanderthal."

NOT Neanderthal, because pre-140 ka.

In NEW PARADIGM, Neanderthals originated from the Levantine macroevolution ~140 ka.

Thus, pre-140 ka Europeans like Pontnewydd are not Neanderthal.

Scladina Neanderthal from Belgium is near to Britain and dated to ~120 ka (Peyrégne et al. 2019).

Their descendants passed into England ~110 ka as the earliest TRUE Neanderthals in Britain.