Sex with Neanderthals Made Us Stronger

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News, 25-08-2011

Mating with Neanderthals and another group of extinct hominids, Denisovans, strengthened the human immune system and left behind evidence in the DNA of people today, according to new research. The findings add to the growing body of evidence that modern humans who left Africa around 65,000 years ago mated with Neanderthals and Denisovans — two archaic species that lived in Europe and Asia. The study, which appears in this week’s Science, is among the first to show how the interbreeding shaped modern human genes and the attributes they pass to us.

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