The scientist behind the Neanderthal genome project said he's certain that Neanderthals and our ancestors had sex.
yet it does seem that European men tend to have thicker semi-brow ridges and jawbones than other groups
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Yet the two species seem to have lived close together in parts of Europe and the Middle East, so it is not impossible to imagine that Neanderthals and humans met on occasions.......................> "I'm sure in a way that they had sex, ............>and that I think we'll be able to answer quite rigorously with the genome sequence we'll have," said Svante Pääbo, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, during a recent conference......................>
Ok I have decided to answer my own post of above. In thinking about whether the two different main groups had sex,
I think that eventually the genome sequence will show that they did.
My extra thoughts about this is due to the fact that there are two mainstream ideas on the Neanderthal/Homo groups.
Those that believe in "Out of Africa."
And those that believe in the "Multi-Regional Theory"
Theory states that ancient hominids left Africa about 1.8 million years ago. OR and at the SAME time, ancient hominids evolved in Asia, Europe, AND Africa.
There is quite a lot of information that there were Multiregional groupings.
The Indonesian Island Hobbits, and a recent discovery of a different genetic grouping living in central Europe. Plus the yet unamed Siberian group. I mentioned under the heading "Fourth Species Found" a week ago, on May 11th.
If the "Out of Africa" AND the "Multiregional Theory" is true ...then the must have been sex, and intermingling of
all Groups to ensure that WE ALL remained a SINGLE SPECIES.
There has been some literateure that the Neanderthal Y chromosome differs from the modern Human. And yet a gene version called FOXP2, involved in the development of speech.... is identical both in Humans and Neanderthals.
Which I suppose gives more grist-to-the mill that there was interbreeding.
