Earlier date for Neanderthal-human sex... Neanderthals and humans interbred '100,000 years ago' Wed, 17 Feb 2016 - Neanderthals and humans interbred about 40,000 years earlier than was previously thought, a study suggests.
It appears that there are at least a couple studies that show Neanderthals to have been smarter than modern humans. Brains are incredibly expensive. The result is that there could be reasons for it to be a competitive advantage for animals to move toward smaller brains. Measurements today show that humans have lost the brain volume of a tennis ball over the last 20,000 years or so. At any rate, the last word on Neanderthals and our relation to them is undoubtedly not out yet.
Intelligence has less to do with brain size, as it does to how it is wired. And to all evidence, Neanderthal was no more or less intelligent then Homo Sapiens. And Homo Sapiens is no more or less intelligent then Homo Sapiens Sapiens. However, they were believed to be smarter then larger brained Cro-Magnon. And both the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon cultures died out at roughly the same time, following a global climate disaster. The biggest difference between Homo Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal and Sapiens seems to simply be in their dispersal across the planet. That is the dispersal of Neanderthal. Other then less expansion into Asia and instead into North Africa, the area that Cro-Magnon populated is almost the same. It is simply the fact that Sapiens rapidly expanded throughout Europe then Asia (and later the Americas) that they continue, while our predecessors are now gone. The only other branch of Homo that expanded anywhere close to this large of an area was Homo Erectus.
Around 100,000 years ago, most H. sapiens were still in Africa and the first interbreeding event between H. sapiens and the Neanderthals could have taken place in East Africa or the Arabian Peninsula. Mitochondrial Eve (L), the matrilineal most recent common ancestor, lived in East Africa approximately 100,000–200,000 years ago, when anatomically modern humans were developing as a population distinct from other human sub-species. Its descendant haplogroup L3 arose in Eastern Africa 104,000 years ago and the L3 people gradually spread to the Arabian Peninsula as the first group of H. sapiens who ventured out of Africa. Therefore, there is a possibility that it was the L3 people who interbred with the Neanderthals in the Arabian Peninsula. Haplogrpup L3 further split into N and M and all European mtDNA haplogroups descended from Haplogroup N and most Asian haplogroups are the descendants of Haplogrpup M, which explains why Asians and Europeans are up to 5% Neanderthal. It's also known that the Cro-Magnons in Europe and the Jomon, the indigenous people of Japan, belonged to Haplogroup N, which did not come into existence until 71,000 years ago.
I find this really interesting. As I remember, there is a theory that there were two separate centers of very early human development. However, by the rules of evolution, these must have been very closely related (and perhaps cross pollinating on a continuing basis?) if there was interbreeding continuing into the end times of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. That seems hard given the distances and the mode of travel at the time. I'm going to have to do some reading...
"Closely related" can be a very vague term. And there are a great many other things here, like parallel evolution. Think on this, how "closely related" are dogs and foxes? Most people would say they are very closely related. Foxes and Dogs split around 10 million years ago, and they can not even interbreed. The Dog (along with wolves, coyotes, etc) have 78 chromosones, while foxes and have only 34 chromosones. And other species, like "Sabre Tooth Cats" have evolved, flourished, died off, then evolved again. Over and over and over again. Smilodon is the most well known and recent (dying off only 10kya), but they evolved and thrived over and over again on every continent except for Australia and Antarctica.
Yes - frankly, that's what makes the map of movement interesting, isn't it? The population of mankind was able to interbreed (same species) for a long time across a population that was monumentally divided by space and with limited transportation.
