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So the latest cool news from the scientific community is that it appears that Cro-Magnons DID interbreed with Neanderthals, and moreover, 1-4% of the genes of modern-day non-Africans come from these Neanderthal ancestors. It appears the interbreeding occured about 60,000-40,000 years ago, when humans left Africa and migrated first into the Middle East (Neanderthal skeletons have been found in Israel) and then into Europe. Neanderthal genes haven't been found in individuals of Southern African or West African origin, but presumably North Africans will turn out to have some Neanderthal DNA from back-migration into Africa.
No Neanderthal mtDNA or y-chromosomes have yet been found in modern-day humans, but this just means our Neanderthal ancestors didn't leave any direct male-line or female-line descendants. It's worth noting that no evidence of Cro-Magnon hybrids have yet been found among Neanderthal remains, but keep in mind that only like 200 Neanderthal skeletons have ever been found. There may've been hybrids that threw in their lot with their Neanderthal relatives, or it may have been that the larger, expanding Cro-Magnon population simply absorbed all the hybrids from the smaller, ever-shrinking Neanderthal population.
Now this makes me wonder how these hybrids came about. There's not much evidence for violent conflict between the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal populations, so we can't just assume that all the hybrids were the result of violent rape (and while I'm sure a Neanderthal male could easy overpower a Cro-Magnon female, the reverse would NOT be true; a female Neanderthal could tear a human male limb-from-limb.) Perhaps as Neanderthal bands shrunk and died off, the survivors were adopted into Cro-Magnon bands. Or perhaps Cro-Magnon females were attracted to the powerful physiques of male Neanderthals and snuck off with them 'behind the woodpile', so to speak.
1-4% might not sound like a lot, but that's one great-great-great-grandparent's genetic contribution to you, as John Hawks points out. Neanderthals weren't just some dead end, Nature's folly, but an important part of our heritage.
No Neanderthal mtDNA or y-chromosomes have yet been found in modern-day humans, but this just means our Neanderthal ancestors didn't leave any direct male-line or female-line descendants. It's worth noting that no evidence of Cro-Magnon hybrids have yet been found among Neanderthal remains, but keep in mind that only like 200 Neanderthal skeletons have ever been found. There may've been hybrids that threw in their lot with their Neanderthal relatives, or it may have been that the larger, expanding Cro-Magnon population simply absorbed all the hybrids from the smaller, ever-shrinking Neanderthal population.
Now this makes me wonder how these hybrids came about. There's not much evidence for violent conflict between the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal populations, so we can't just assume that all the hybrids were the result of violent rape (and while I'm sure a Neanderthal male could easy overpower a Cro-Magnon female, the reverse would NOT be true; a female Neanderthal could tear a human male limb-from-limb.) Perhaps as Neanderthal bands shrunk and died off, the survivors were adopted into Cro-Magnon bands. Or perhaps Cro-Magnon females were attracted to the powerful physiques of male Neanderthals and snuck off with them 'behind the woodpile', so to speak.
1-4% might not sound like a lot, but that's one great-great-great-grandparent's genetic contribution to you, as John Hawks points out. Neanderthals weren't just some dead end, Nature's folly, but an important part of our heritage.
