• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

We Now Know Exactly Where In The World Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up

September 7, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

It’s a well-established (and slightly uncomfortable) fact that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred with one another. Recent research looked into when this inter-species kanoodling occurred and now another new piece of research has investigated where exactly it happened.

Advertisement

Scientists took a close look at the geographical distribution of both species in Southwest Asia and Southeast Europe around the time we know they hooked up during the Late Pleistocene.

This revealed a clear location where the two human species overlapped with each other and likely interbred: the Zagros Mountains, a long mountain range on the Persian Plateau that stretches across the modern-day borders of Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey.

The Zagros Mountains would have been an ideal place for the two species to rendezvous. The region has a diverse range of biodiversity and topography capable of supporting large stable human populations. Plus, it could have welcomed humans from other parts of the planet during the Pleistocene climatic shifts, acting as a corridor connecting the cooler Palearctic realm with the warmer Afrotropical realm.

The location also neatly lines up with the archeological record and genetic evidence. The Zagros Mountains region is rich in archaeological sites containing the remains of both Neanderthals and prehistoric Homo sapiens.

Goats chill out in the Zagros Mountains of southwest Iran.

Goats chill out in the Zagros Mountains of southwest Iran.

Image credit: Ida Baranyai/Shutterstock.com

One of the most famous is the Shanidar Cave in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, which holds the best-preserved Neanderthal skeleton ever unearthed. It’s also the location of the famous “flower burial”, a Neanderthal skeleton that appears to have been scattered with plant pollen. Whether or not the placement of flowers was intentional remains controversial.

Advertisement

Around the same time that Neanderthals were in the region, evidence shows that the Persian plateau served as an important hub for Homo sapiens as they embarked on their main migration out of Africa.

Altogether, several strands of evidence suggest that the Zagros Mountains – sat on the crossroad between Europe, Asia, and Africa – was the place where the different human species would run into each other around the time we know interbreeding took place.

The legacy of this interspecies romping still lives on today. Scientists discovered that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred in 2010 when they first sequenced the full Neanderthal genome.

With further work, it was revealed that between 1 and 4 percent of the genomes of all non-African humans alive today derive from Neanderthals. These genes continue to shape many facets of our appearance and behavior, from bigger noses and lower pain thresholds to higher vulnerability to COVID-19 and depression.

Advertisement

The new study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: We Now Know Exactly Where In The World Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Why Do Spiders’ Legs Curl Up Like That When They’re Dead?
  • “Dead Men’s Fingers” Might Just Be The Strangest Fruit On The Planet
  • The South Atlantic’s Giant Weak Spot In The Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Growing
  • Nearly Half A Century After Being Lost, “Zombie Satellite” LES-1 Began Sending Signals To Earth
  • Extinct In the Wild, An Incredibly Rare Spix’s Macaw Chick Hatches In New Hope For Species
  • HUNTR/X Or Giant Squid? Following Alien Claims, We Asked Scientists What They Would Like Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS To Be
  • Flat-Earthers Proved Wrong Using A Security Camera And A Garage
  • Earth Breaches Its First Climate Tipping Point: We’re Moving Into A World Without Coral Reefs
  • Cheese Caves, A Proposal, And Chance: How Scientists Ended Up Watching Fungi Evolve In Real Time
  • Lab-Grown 3D Embryo Models Make Their Own Blood In Regenerative Medicine Breakthrough
  • Humans’ Hidden “Sixth Sense” To Be Mapped Following $14.2 Million Prize – What Is Interoception?
  • Purple Earth Hypothesis: Our Planet Was Not Blue And Green Over 2.4 Billion Years Ago
  • Hippos Hung Around In Europe 80,000 Years Later Than We Thought
  • Officially Gone: Slender-Billed Curlew, Once-Widespread Migratory Bird, Declared Extinct By IUCN
  • Watch: Rare Footage Captures Freaky Faceless Cusk Eels Lurking On The Deep-Sea Floor
  • Watch This Funky Sea Pig Dancing Its Way Through The Deep Sea, Over 2,300 Meters Below The Surface
  • NASA Lets YouTuber Steve Mould Test His “Weird Chain Theory” In Space
  • The Oldest Stalagmite Ever Dated Was Found In Oklahoma Rocks, Dating Back 289 Million Years
  • 2024’s Great American Eclipse Made Some Birds Behave In Surprising Ways, But Not All Were Fooled
  • “Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version