Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Neanderthals Not The Only Apes Humans Bred With



New Scientist: Neanderthals not the only apes humans bred with.

A LONG-awaited rough draft of the Neanderthal genome has revealed that our own DNA contains clear evidence that early humans interbred with Neanderthals.

Such interminglings have been suspected in the past, but there's more: Neanderthals were probably not the only other Homo species early Homo sapiens mixed with.

These findings call into question the familiar story that modern humans left Africa around 100,000 years ago and swept aside all other Homo species as they made their way around the globe. "It was a very simple story," says João Zilhão at the University of Bristol, UK. "Its simplicity suggested it would not be true." A more likely scenario is that as H. sapiens migrated, they met and interbred with other Homo species that have all since died out.

4 comments:

Fungus the Photo! said...

Neandertal SEX!?

As a label????

Branching out?

Anonymous said...

Different species can't bread and create a baby. Humans are Humans. If they mated and created a baby, their partner was human. Period.

You can't mate with an APE.

Unknown said...

if we could breed with him ; it would be like mating with your great great great many greats grandfather

Unknown said...

Are you saying that Humans today are not apes? Because we are apes, and so were Neanderthals, and so were our many other ancestors. Ape does not mean monkey or gorilla.