They still would prefer Neanderthal men today, we regret to report. May be, this is why we are starting to die out too. They just don't like Homo sapiens men so much in order to deal with them. And if we don't interact enough, we don't have many children.
“FRANKFURT.
On average, Central Europeans carry around two percent Neanderthal genes in their genetic makeup.
For although *Homo sapiens*—and *Homo neanderthalensis*, the early human form that went extinct around 40,000 years ago—are anatomically regarded as distinct species, they were capable of producing fertile offspring together. And indeed, they did just that. This occurred once, around 250,000 years ago in the Near East—where *H. sapiens* had made its first foray out of Africa—and again between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, when the non-Neanderthal branch of our ancestors advanced into Ice Age Central Europe.
Since *Homo sapiens* appears to have played the more active role in these migratory movements, one might assume that events unfolded much as they often did later in history: conquering *sapiens* males behaved in a predictably toxic manner during their conquests, helping themselves to the female population they encountered. Now, researchers led by geneticist Alexander Platt of the University of Pennsylvania have published a study in the journal *Science* suggesting that, in the vast majority of cases, encounters between the two species must actually have been clearly one-sided. However, the dynamic was precisely the opposite: the pairings predominantly involved male Neanderthals and females of anatomically modern humans.
With their analysis, Platt and his colleagues originally set out to determine why our X chromosomes—one of the two chromosomes that determine a person's sex—contain far fewer Neanderthal genes than our other chromosomes. They hypothesized that *sapiens* genes located there might have had a negative impact on the survival of the hybrid offspring. If so, the Neanderthal DNA of individuals dating back to the initial interbreeding event 250,000 years ago should already have exhibited a particularly low proportion of such genes. Yet, analyses of ancient genetic remains in Neanderthal bones from Russia and Croatia revealed the opposite: Neanderthal X chromosomes contained a particularly high amount of *sapiens* DNA—a relative excess of 62 percent.
The researchers can rule out the effects of natural selection as the cause of this pattern. Theoretically, it would be possible to explain these results by positing a surplus of women or men, respectively, within the two populations. However, the simpler—and, in the view of Alexander Platt and his colleagues, therefore far more probable—explanation is a strong preference among Neanderthal men for women of *sapiens* lineage.
This does not imply, however, that it was the Neanderthals who abducted *sapiens* beauties. Indeed, there is no other archaeological evidence whatsoever of interpersonal violence between members of the two groups. Moreover, it is equally possible that men of Neanderthal descent were simply more attractive to our Ice Age female ancestors than were "purebred" *Homo sapiens* males. The latter scenario would be even more likely if, within the genus *Homo* at that time, mating dynamics still followed the pattern typically observed in the animal kingdom—where it is the females who ultimately make the choice.” [1]
1. Wer mit wem in der Eiszeit: Neandertaler-Männer bevorzugten Menschenfrauen. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 28 Feb 2026: 9. ULF VON RAUCHHAUPT
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