Hacker News Reader

Comment by bwnkl | Hacker News Reader

> for example the 2026 discovery that interbreeding was predominantly between Neanderthal males and human females, and not between Neanderthal females and human males.

I thought this was an interesting detail in the article, and trying to find out more about a possible reason for this discrepancy, I found a recent paper concluding that this was possibly due to mate preference [1]. Neanderthal dudes were smoking hot!

[1]: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aea6774

View on HN

Am I wrong in thinking that these babies are bred as a result of inter-group conflict and r_pe, rather than voluntarily? I never thought of it as likely to be due to "romance" between species.

If that is the case, it may also be that male homo sapiens weren't strong enough to subdue neanderthal females.

You can just write “rape”. Don’t let yourself be trained by social media algorithms.

Fair point. I wasn't sure what would get censored on here.

I think this is what you want to think, to support a world-view you have had constructed in your head through prior, often unrelated, experiences.

Prejudice is natural, being able to fight the first hunch & against instinct, await & study more information is really hard. At least for me, it requires active effort.

I don't want to think anything in particular at all and this is tied to no specific worldview, just a rudimentary knowledge of history.

It still happens today in armed conflict, so I don't know why you would think it would be less common amongst early humans operating without a moral framework.

All your active effort to study seems to be misleading you. Perhaps you are studying the wrong things?

Isn't it believed to be (at least partially) caused by maternofetal Rh incompatibility that was likely to happen with Neanderthal mother and human father?

There is a paper that was describing, that Neanderthals had their mtdna replaced by something mtdna that was more related to Homo Sapiens starting about 400 000 years ago and fully replaced? 200 000 years ago, so matrilineally Neanderthals were close to Homo Sapiens already. And that question should have not been raised nowadays at all. Besides we also have already found remains of 50% and 25% hybrids, so doesn't seem to be a problem of interbreeding with other humans - just like our ancestors had not issues interbreed with Denisovans as well, with whom we had slightly larger DNA differences than with Neanderthals.

Bigger issue seems to be that Neanderthal inbreeding between themselves as they were living without access to other pools of dna of humans and that most probably was a cause why they did not bounce back.

Rh incompatibility results in limited ability to crossbreed, not complete inability. It usually doesn't affect the first child, only subsequent ones.

It was y-dna so there goes your theory.

Maybe they just disappeared because they were more attracted to HS women and therefore gradually stopped reproducing in their tribes.

At least that will never happen again, we're safe now.

Wait, what's that Futurama, robot women and... OH NO!

Possibly, but I think there was something about the Neanderthal female uterus not being able to host the offspring that was part human.

Psst. Neanderthals were humans too, just not HS.

Would they not be considered a separate species especially if they have trouble interbreeding?

Yeah. Them denisovans etc are all different human species or subspecies. Sometimes they're referred to as archaic humans. Homo means human, and we're talking about other species or subspecies that have art, probably language, tight social structures, some evidence they had seafaring abilities - and our ancestors clearly did interbreed and produce viable offspring - they're human. Feels kinda like a dick move to call them extinct tbh. They had kids, their kids had kids, etc all the way to the present day where they have literally billions of descendants carrying their DNA - like mission accomplished lol what else is a species to do?

Yes, a separate species of humans.

Still humans.

HS are sometimes called "modern humans" to differentiate.

Modern humans still have the exact same troubles with Rh incompatibility, we only learned how to overcome them very recently.

Rh disease seems to me to be far from being the exact same issue as what was suggested in this thread. Rh disease is due to bloodtype incompatibility between the mother and the baby, and only sometimes triggers.

Even then, Rh disease usually only causes symptoms in the baby in subsequent pregnancies with the same bloodtype incompatibilities, when the antibodies already exist in the mother.

I'm not sure what exactly it means that Neanderthal women's uterus wouldn't be able to host HS babies, but that sounds different to me.

Unless you know more about this Neanderthal uterine incompatibility.

The thing with Neanderthals is that there is much more crossbreeding observed in genetic lines between Neanderthal males and AMH females than Neanderthal females and AMH males, not that only the former is observed. Rh incompatibility is often proposed as a possible explanation, so I believe that's what was being (inaccurately) referred to here as "not being able to host the offspring".

I see, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

Lol. Bride kidnapping is still a thing. In my culture it’s not a thing anymore, but it’s still being acted out as part of wedding customs. There’s also a separate word for “people who go after the people who stole the girl”.

I find it more likely the admixture is from girls our ancestors went to take back who were already pregnant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com