The existence and nature of a bottleneck and recovery in human history is unclear. The early indications from haemoglobin mutants and mtDNA were unambiguous; subsequently some systems (microsatellites, some SNPs) have have confirmed the early picture while others (nuclear sequences, most SNPs) show no evidence of the bottleneck.
One possible resolution of the discrepancies is to consider a model of a wave of advance of modern humans during which there was partial isolation of modern and archaic populations. The wave of advance itself could generate the signatures of a bottleneck in some genetic systems, while partial incorporation of archaic genes at other systems could have occurred. This work is done in collaboration with Vinayak Eswaran of the Indian Institue of Technology at Kanpur.
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