For instance, most Europeans only developed a tolerance to lactose when our ancestors started to eat more dairy produce. Genetic changes can also occur when large populations are faced with devastating diseases such as the Black Death in the 14th Century, which changed the genes of survivors.
In a similar vein, Hublin proposes that modern humans, at some point, benefited from key genetic changes.
For the first 100,000 years of our existence, modern humans behaved much like Neanderthals. then something changed. Our tools became more complex, around the time when we started developing symbolic artefacts.
We now have genetic evidence to suggest that our DNA changed at some point after we split from the common ancestor we shared with Neanderthals.