[nestorD]

It is not my domain but, as far as I know, before finding neandertal DNA in current humans we thought they probably had been exterminated but now the statu quo seem to be that they have been integrated and have mixed with our species.

I believe it would be a good bet that another human species living alongside us would have merged with us by know.

[imesh]

That's a rosy colored view of how we mixed. Maybe there was that, but one thing I would bet on is rape. Probably a mixture.

[b5]

You're refuting his view as rosy, but positing that the real answer was horror. It's almost certainly something in between the two.

Personally, I think that the most likely explanation is that most mixing came through adoption of fertile women into the human tribes. Males of other tribes would probably not have been accepted so readily, and likely driven off or killed, but fertile females would have been more easily integrated. From there, you naturally get a mix of the two.

The relative percentages of Neanderthal and Sapien DNA in modern humans would indicate that Sapiens outcompeted the Neanderthals and relatively few interbred with us.

[dogma1138]

I’m not entirely sure that this was only one way.

Neanderthal mtDNA is fairly rare in humans while nuclear DNA is much more common. Oddly enough in population with higher percentage of nuclear DNA mtDNA is rarer so it’s not clear which side did the gene transferring.

It could be that there are other reasons behind this for example that Neanderthals and modern human female offsprings were less likely to survive or reproduce than males.

But overall it’s really not clear how the populations mixed and who did more of the pillaging and raping.

[Symmetry]

That's probably more a matter of natural selection. neanderthal y-chromosome DNA was also almost entirely eliminated from the human genome, as well as neanderthal genes in several other places.

When two different dog breeds have pups those mutts are just as fertile as any other dog. When a horse and a donkey have a mule that mule is almost entirely infertile. The first human/neanderthal descendants were probably significantly less fertile than their parents but generations of selective pressure seem to have purged the particular genes that were causing problems which you would expect to include mDNA.

[238sjni9]

Can you provide a source for human neanderthal mtDNA?

[dogma1138]

Rape was a valid reproductive strategy for humans for most of our history. Why do you think mongol DNA is so prevalent?

Reproduction through “love” is a fairly modern concept, while not all rape was at the hands of an invading army or by some serial predator in a dimly lit cave (or parking lot) the sexual dynamics were very different across the population and would be considered rape by most people today especially in the west.

[BurningFrog]

Rape is probably behind at least 10% of human pregnancies throughout history, and it would have been much more without all extreme countermeasure people had to take.

I roll my eyes at people who talk about American "rape culture". But we definitely are a rape species!

[DC-3]

That's only true insofar as a massive proportion of all intercourse prior to civilized society was probably rape - interspecies or otherwise.

[TomMarius]

And that was out of the norm back then?