Does that mean that Neandertals interbred with the ancestors of modern humans?
Probably! But there’s one other explanation that we can’t rule out: perhaps the “Neandertal” genes in modern non-African humans are simply genes that are very old and were present in the common ancestors of both modern humans and Neandertals. These then could have been transmitted to Neandertals and non-African humans, while the ancestors of modern Africans simply did not get a sample of those genes. (Note that this does not mean that, evolutionarily speaking, modern non-Africans are more closely related to Neandertals than to modern Africans!) The “differential sorting” scenario seems unlikely to me because it involves special pleading about a non-random distribution of genes between proto-human populations that occurred well before our lineage diverged from that of Neandertals. • Why the attention about hybridization? People are fascinated by the possibility that several different species (or subspecies) of humans could have successfully mated with each other. We already knew that, o
Related Questions
- Now, bear with me here. Neandertals were stupid, right? So why would one of their brain genes be advantageous in modern humans?
- What other abilities did modern humans have that allowed them to flourish while Neandertals disappeared?
- Do genetic differences disprove that Neandertals and modern humans interbred?
