@brianjakub,
brianjakub wrote:
Quote:interestingly, they would result overwhelmingly from Male neander X female sapiens, rather than vice versa.
. That is a very interesting observation but how in the heck do we know who was bedding who?that is assuming of course they were civilized enough to do it in a bed :-)
We know something about interspecies sexual reproduction through the study of our genes, and increasingly the study of fossil DNA. It would seem that:
1. Sapiens populations from Eurasia would have typically 3-4% of their nucleus DNA that comes from a Neanderthal origin. Not always on the same genes though, so the total percentage of Neanderthal genome preserved across many different current Sapiens is larger, maybe 20 percent? of the old cousin's genome was preserved among us, dispersed across all of us, with each of us having only a fraction of that Neandetthal DNA.
2. No present Sapiens studied so far had any mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthal origin in him/her.
3. No DNA of Neanderthal origin has been found so far on a Sapiens Y chromosome.
4. Some studied Neanderthal fossils had both mitochondrial DNA of Sapiens origin as well as regular nucleus DNA from Sapiens.
These facts are still tentative. Much could still change as more DNA gets analysed in both the living and dead. But assuming they hold true, they tell us the following:
1. tells us that there was some significant interbreeding that, as explained upthread, came about around 60,000 yr ago, prior to the colonisation of Europe by Sapiens.
2. and 3. implies that fact 1. resulted from the survival and succesful reproduction, within early Sapiens societies in contact with Neanderthal, of
female offsprings (daughters) of female Sapiens and male Neanderthal.
The male offsprings resulting from such unions may have had some fertility problem. Or maybe they had monstruous cocks or somethin'...
4. implies that some female Sapiens once reproduced successfully in Neanderthal societies. They had fertile offsprings who further mingled with other Neanderthal. So the gene flux went both ways.
wooooooooo !
Or does it make me a Bohunk.
