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SecretNature t1_iv0kwhl wrote

Reply to comment by SweetBasil_ in Why don't we have Neandertal mitochondrial DNA? by nodeciapalabras

That’s not how mitochondrial DNA works. It is passed from mother to offspring 100% intact. Unlike nuclear DNA which mixes and you can end up with a “tiny bit”, mitochondrial DNA is all or nothing.

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hodlboo t1_iv2zo2v wrote

I think they meant a small amount on a population level, not on an individual organism level. And on a population level, a small amount of Neanderthal mdna carriers would indeed be easy to lose to history because they would have to have had an unbroken line of daughters leading to today, any carriers who only had sons would break the line, as others explained above. Thousands of years alone is plenty of time for that to occur, if the Neanderthal mdna female homo sapien population was small to begin with.

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