"If Neanderthals interbred with modern humans as early as new findings suggest, the distinction becomes meaningless.
“Our first sex with Neanderthals happened100,000 years ago,”
New Scientist shouts. This is a shocking story of a tryst that is steamier than any dime novel. It was announced in Nature by Dr. Sergi Castellano and a research team from Max Planck Institute. Colin Barras reports, "It was a two-way street. Many people carry ancient Neanderthal DNA in their genome as a result of cross-species liaisons around 50,000 years ago. Now it seems that some Neanderthals carried our DNA, too."
The BBC News agrees with the100,000-year date for the secret dating encounter, but things gets worse. Where did the liaison take place? According to Live Science, if you guessed the Fertile Crescent, you’re getting warmer. Castellano and his colleagues speculated that the episode of interbreeding they detected may have occurred in the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean region that includes Israel and Syria. Previous research suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals were present in the Levant as early as 120,000 years ago. Another potential location for this interbreeding was Southern Arabia and the area around the Persian Gulf, they added. “The exact place where the gene flow occurred is not settled, but the Near East fits the fossil evidence we currently have,” Castellano told Live Science.
This news is worse than the prior week’s announcements that Neanderthal DNA is responsible for some of our modern maladies like depression, allergies and obesity (Science Magazine, PhysOrg). Not that all Neanderthal genes are bad; some seem to increase the immune system, the claim went. But if “interspecies gene flow” between the two groups dates back120,000 years or more, such distinctions are academic. Species are defined by the ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. And speaking of fertile, isn’t the Fertile Crescent where the Tower of Babel was located? Is that mere coincidence? " CEH
And God said, Let us make man in our image, .. Genesis 1:26
“Our first sex with Neanderthals happened
The BBC News agrees with the
This news is worse than the prior week’s announcements that Neanderthal DNA is responsible for some of our modern maladies like depression, allergies and obesity (Science Magazine, PhysOrg). Not that all Neanderthal genes are bad; some seem to increase the immune system, the claim went. But if “interspecies gene flow” between the two groups dates back
And God said, Let us make man in our image, .. Genesis 1:26
