did Neanderthalman breed with homo sapiens ?

Question

And can we tell today who has neanderthaler genes ?

Answer 1

Despite the way the species are depicted on science specials, the mainstream views of physical anthropology are that there is simply not any convincing evidence that Homo sapiens and H. neanderthalensis met, let alone interbred.

Nevertheless, a minority of anthropologists do think that there is evidence that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens may have interbred. Probably the most famous one of these anthros in the U.S. is Milford Wolpoff, who is one of the remaining major proponents of a multiregional origin for Homo sapiens. This is basically the idea that it was through the constant interbreeding of the multiple contemporaneous species of Homo that predated us that the H. sapiens species arose. In his view, H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis did not really die off so much as they got absorbed by the new, hybrid species, H. sapiens.

Wolpoff holds that modern humans from different regions of the world display traits that seem to be derived from other species of Homo that lived in those regions thousands of years ago. The problem with Wolpoff is that his evidence is largely morphological, which can be misleading. There is no genetic evidence for interbreeding. The presence of a gene for red hair that predates humans' arrival in Europe, for instance, could indicate that the gene simply predates that event. There are certainly red-haired people in Africa, where there may have been archaic Homo sapiens as long as 130,000 years ago.

The answers to your questions are, "Probably not, but who knows?" and "No one does," respectively.

Answer 2

Genetic research says no ... Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man didn't get it on. At least not in any significant way. I am not sure if there is any archaeological evidence that they had much contact either. I think there was some tool sharing evidence. But the Neanderthals were way under tooled and just plain could not compete with the smarter, more numerous and more adaptable Cro-Magnon.

Answer 3

They did a DNA study of DNA extracted from 30,000 yo Neanderthal bones and based on the study, it appears that we have not significanly interbred because none of the marker genes were present in current populations. It is possible that some inter-breeding took place, but it seems to be minimal or if at all.

Answer 4

Red hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, scientists believe.

Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford say that the so-called "ginger gene" which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100,000 years old.

They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200,000 years before Homo sapiens settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago.

Rosalind Harding, the research team leader, said: "The gene is certainly older than 50,000 years and it could be as old as 100,000 years.

"An explanation is that it comes from Neanderthals." It is estimated that at least 10 per cent of Scots have red hair and a further 40 per cent carry the gene responsible, which could account for their once fearsome reputation as fighters.

Neanderthals have been characterized as migrant hunters and violent cannibals who probably ate most of their meat raw. They were taller and stockier than Home sapiens, but with shorter limbs, bigger faces and noses, receding chins and low foreheads.

The two species overlapped for a period of time and the Oxford research appears to suggest that they must have successfully interbred for the "ginger gene" to survive. Neanderthals became extinct about 28,000 years ago, the last dying out in southern Spain and southwest France.

http://www.ramsdale.org/dna19.htm...

Jean M. Auel writer of the Earth's Children Series based her books on the ginger gene hypothesis.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sto...
her books are
The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Valley of Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
The Shelters of Stone
See a Pubmed article on the subject in
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17027252&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum

Answer 5

They may have but it hasn´t been proven. It has been supposed that people from the Basque region in Spain are direct descendants of Cro-Magnon man.

Answer 6

Aliens bred with Neanderthal man and that produced homosapiens. Science will figure that out eventually.

Answer 7

It's plausible. Highly unlikely, though.