Having read the paper “Mapping gene flow between ancient hominins through demography-aware inference of the ancestral recombination graph”, which used ARGweaver-D, I would like to explain some of the subjects discussed.  I am an amateur in the field but find it fascinating.    The research performed in this paper took genetic information from other studies and ran the information through a new(ish) computer program to attempt to find the amount of genetic material that transferred from one human ancestral group to another.  The groups that were investigated were homo sapiens (us), Neanderthals, Denisovans, and multiple unknown ancient ancestral groups (super-archaic humans).  They used a new extension of a computer program, ARGweaver, called ARGweaver-D, using Bayesian algorithms. ARG stands for ancestral recombination graphs which is a way of saying there is a common ancestor, a number of generations pass, and some descendants of the common ancestor have children together.  The genes of the descendants have re-combined to form a new set of genes.  The difference is that the number of generations that pass can be counted over some number of millennia.    This study was intended to see if the new ARGWeaver-D computer model update will work as accurately as hoped.  The mixing…