Paleosex
Miscegenation. Such an underused word these days when relativism has become the rule and morality has become spatial.
The Neandertal genome project has produced some furor in the media. Seems that researchers at the Max Planck Institut have opined that neandertals and sapiens did indeed have sexual congress. [Link] At issue, happily is the question of whether the offspring, assuming there were such, contributed to the modern sapiens genome.
Did I miss something here? Has some tryst site been discovered? Are there pictures? Or is this one of those dataless pronouncements made occasionally by overconcentrating scientists?
Not that I am adverse to the theory. In my mind it rather makes more sense for sapiens and neandertals to have had congress than not. That is opinion, no data. And I am not a biologist nor an anthropologist. But I am at sea a bit on how one can make definite statement without data? Or is science different in Europe?
The only way I can hypothesize getting to this is to have not only the neandertal and modern sapiens genomes, but the ancient sapiens genome as well. And then if it does develop that part of the modern sapiens genome is due to neandertal DNA, then we may reasonable, evidentially, infer sapiens-neandertal congress via Occam’s Razor.
But don’t tell the Cabots or the Lodges.
