For ages, humans and their scientists have denied that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens have interbred - yet my own intuition always kept signalling: They Did!Said intuition based itself mainly on the fact that looking around myself while traveling six times around the world, I kept seeing people and faces that looked very Neanderthal - myself included. Even more funny, I was born just a few kilometers away from the geographical Neanderthal, and I went there - in my youth - quite often to visit the Neanderthal Museum.
And now, with the latest research by Professor Svante Paabo, it looks like that the white-skinned and red-haired Neanderthals did welcome their counterparts who arrived from Africa. It was a mistake, of course, because the meeting resulted - apart from sex - in the extinction of Homo neanderthalensis; except for the mixed breed of kids resulting from the unions.
Detailed info in Times OnLine article (October 25, 2009)
Image Source: Chattahbox - no further credits available.
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