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Boing Boing

Neanderthal men had a thing for modern human women, genomes show

Ellsworth Toohey
Feb 27, 2026
∙ Paid

illustrative image: Neanderthal, Esin Deniz/Shutterstock

When Neanderthal men encountered modern human women tens of thousands of years ago, they were apparently very interested. A new genomic analysis published in Science examined the X chromosomes of completed Neanderthal genomes and found them loaded with modern human DNA sequences — far more than you…

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