Study Reveals Sapiens Copulated the Y Out of Neanderthals - Ancient Origins

Early human interbreeding  with our “cousins” the  Denisovans and Neanderthals is an established fact but newly sequenced Neanderthal Y-chromosomes tell scientists that modern humans are the product of a complex history of interspecies sex.

Neanderthals had lived in  Eurasia for more than 300,000 years, when our modern human ancestors left  Africa in the most recent wave some 60,000–70,000 years ago.

Recent research confirms early human interbreeding but also provides evidence that makes our earliest encounters with both Neanderthals and Denisovans a much more complicated relationship.

While it is known that Neanderthals left their genetic mark in the DNA of modern humans, less was known about the reverse flow of  Homo sapiens’  DNA into Neanderthals when the two species met in Eurasia around 45,000 years ago.

However, a new study on early human interbreeding has shown that those Neanderthals already had  Homo sapiens’  genes on board from “much earlier encounters," and the new research also suggests the  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome had “completely replaced the original Neanderthal Y chromosome sometime between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago.”.

The study results were based on Y-chromosome  DNA sequencing  of “two Denisovans and three Neanderthals samples gathered from sites in France, Russia and Spain dating between 38,000 to 53,000 years ago.” The results confirm early human interbreeding with these two species of  hominins.

The paper says that “over time, our version of the Y-chromosome genome ended up replacing the Neanderthal version.” Therefore, early human interbreeding first occurred a long time ago, and then, after a very long break, it happened again.

Previous gene studies have mostly all indicated that modern human “alleles” probably entered the Neanderthal gene pool  slowly.

A Neanderthal man holding a Neanderthal's skull perhaps wondering how much of his DNA was from modern humans and Denisovans

The exact nature of this genetic “selective advantage,” which was written into  Homo sapiens ' Y-chromosome DNA, is yet unknown because of a distinct lack of Denisovans and Neanderthal genome samples

As fate would have it, the archaeological record is heavily populated by female Neanderthals and female Denisovans but almost void of male remains, and it’s the men that pass on the Y chromosomes

Hopefully, over time, more male Neanderthals and male Denisovans will be found and more gene sequencing can be carried out to solve the selective advantage puzzle

But it is very interesting to know that we modern humans carry a complex DNA mixture that could only come from early human interbreeding with other hominins over a very long period of time

Top image: Early human interbreeding is well known but a recent research study has shown that modern humans both received and gave DNA to Neanderthals, proving that these hominin cousins met more than once in the long arc of prehistoric time.            Source: AlienCat /  Adobe Stock