Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Breaking Ancient News!

Early humans may have interbred with Neanderthals after all, according to research discussed in Science (via Erich Vieth on Dangerous Intersection).

I'm always interested in ancient scandals about who was sleeping with whom, so this is big news, and I have previously been impressed to learn that Neanderthals possessed a gene for red hair, so they obviously had valuable DNA and their blood is welcome in the human family as far as I'm concerned.

They totally would ask my opinion, too, if I could grab a time machine and go back when and figure out how to communicate with them all over wherever it was they mingled for however many thousands of years.

Good story, right?

Anyway, although it makes no practical difference one way or the other since any distinct culture they possessed is long gone (along with every contemporary distinct human culture), I have to kind of like the idea that there may still be some traces of them around today.

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2 comments:

erinserb said...

There are! Aren't they on the Geico commercials??? :-)

A'Llyn said...

Those are cavemen. Totally different. I bet. :)