I can’t believe people are being so flippant describing this story (“sex life”) when there’s a high probability that the differential is because neanderthal males were raping homo sapiens females. Neanderthals had much higher muscle mass and were much stronger than homo sapiens.
Presumably this hypothesis is meant to explain why there is this observed asymmetry in the type of Neanderthal DNA we find in modern human populations that contain them, which is entirely autosomal. With none in the mitochondrial form, which is exclusively passed down along the female line, and also none in the Y-chromosome form, which is exclusively passed down along the male line.
Without weighing on the validity of their hypothesis that one or both sides found the other“especially attractive”, an alternative mechanism that could explain why we only see Neanderthal autosomal DNA in modern humans could be that only the female offspring of male-Neanderthal and female-sapiens pairings were reproductively fertile. This is more commonly the case in interspecies hybrids, see Haldane’s rule.
Because these hybrids would contain mtDNA from their human female line. Neanderthal mtDNA could only be passed down by Neanderthal females.
And because none of those are found in any modern human populations, we can conclude no humans today are descended from female Neanderthals. Though whether hybridized descendants from male-sapiens female-Neanderthal pairings never existed, or they did exist for some time then eventually went extinct, we cannot currently say with certainty.
> we can conclude no humans today are descended from female Neanderthals.
that's worded wrong, strictly speaking. if there's a male neanderthal ancestor, then he very likely has a neanderthal mom or grandma or ... great^N grandma for some N.
Before anyone jaunts too far down the road of literal survivorship bias, I'd like to point out that it'd be incredibly premature—or perhaps way too late—to speculate much on the social side of things.
Elsewhere I've seen some people making hay about exactly whose-males were with whose-females, and want to point out that it's normal for genes to cause asymmetries.
In particular, consider the modern problem of RH incompatibility [0], where one pairing is more likely to end up with a child than an identical but gender-bent one.
Boy it so tempting to come up with "just so" stories to explain this. And so frustrating that we will probably never be able to determine the answer. but still cool.
This is far from being the only or even main explanation to their extinction.
The Neanderthal populations were extremely inbred, so I'd guess that was a bigger factor to their decline.
Without weighing on the validity of their hypothesis that one or both sides found the other“especially attractive”, an alternative mechanism that could explain why we only see Neanderthal autosomal DNA in modern humans could be that only the female offspring of male-Neanderthal and female-sapiens pairings were reproductively fertile. This is more commonly the case in interspecies hybrids, see Haldane’s rule.
And because none of those are found in any modern human populations, we can conclude no humans today are descended from female Neanderthals. Though whether hybridized descendants from male-sapiens female-Neanderthal pairings never existed, or they did exist for some time then eventually went extinct, we cannot currently say with certainty.
that's worded wrong, strictly speaking. if there's a male neanderthal ancestor, then he very likely has a neanderthal mom or grandma or ... great^N grandma for some N.
Elsewhere I've seen some people making hay about exactly whose-males were with whose-females, and want to point out that it's normal for genes to cause asymmetries.
In particular, consider the modern problem of RH incompatibility [0], where one pairing is more likely to end up with a child than an identical but gender-bent one.
[0] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21053-rh-fact...
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