Boning Up on Neanderthals

When we think of Neanderthals, we usually picture a crude, boorish, big boned, uncivilized man weilding a giant club. When humans who co-existed with Neanderthals came across one of them, they saw something else: a thirst trap. Come on. The receding hairline. The thick unibrow. The aggressive table manners. You know you want this! OK, this is starting to sound a little too much like my Tinder profile. And I am writing this from a room my family calls a Man Cave. Maybe I’m part Neanderthal. Plenty of humans still have faint traces of Neanderthal DNA. Our more advanced ability to analyze the human (etc) genome has made it clear why. “A pair of new studies sheds light on a pivotal but mysterious chapter of the human origin story, revealing that modern humans and Neanderthals had babies together for an extended period, peaking 47,000 years ago — leaving genetic fingerprints in modern-day people.” WaPo: (Gift Article): Scientists pinpoint when humans had babies with Neanderthals. An anthropologist explains: “It paints a different story than this rare encounter. Whenever you ran into a Neanderthal, it was okay to have a baby with a Neanderthal.” (Compare that to now when most people won’t even make out with a person from a different political party.)

+ When Neanderthals interbred with ancient humans: Research clarifies timeline of human evolution. “‘Human history is not just a story of success. We actually went extinct several times.” (This actually gives me hope for the next four years…)