It was sex among the Neanderthals | the Chronicle

Even if Neanderthals died out 40,000 years ago, discoveries are still being made today on various aspects of his life, including their sexual experiences.

In a special report, the BBC details how was the sex life of these ancestors that before becoming extinct, they were related to homo sapiens and left us between 1 and 3% of their genetic load.

The channel evokes the discovery of the anthropologist Laura Weyrich, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University, who found a 48-thousand-year-old microscopic parasite in a prehistoric tooth and indicates that this finding may help to understand how the interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens occurred.

“I see ancient microbes as a way to learn more about the past, and tartar really is the only reliable way to rebuild the microorganisms that lived inside ancient humans.“, he said during a dialogue with the BBC.

To find out what they ate and how they bonded, Weyrich DNA sequenced dental plaque in teeth found in three different caves. Two of these samples were taken from 13 Neanderthals found in the El Sidrón cave in Asturias.

One of the teeth found had the generic signature of a microorganism resembling a bacterium, Methanobrevibacter oralis, which even today it can be found in our mouths.

“What fascinates me is that It is It is also one of the first periods in which we describe the interbreeding between man and Neanderthal.. So it’s wonderful to see some kind of microbe involved in this interaction.“, he comments.

Bacteria, Weyrich argues, could have gotten there for a kiss. “When you kiss someone, oral germs come and go between their mouths. It may have happened once, but it then spread like magic, if the infected group was successful. But it could also be something that happened more regularly.“.

For the time being we do not know if it was Neanderthal women who slept with homo sapiens or if it was the other way around, but according to BBC there are some indications.

In 2008, archaeologists found a broken finger bone and molar tooth in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Russia. It was discovered like this a new subspecies of humans: the Denisovans.

According to the channel, this subspecies was more related to Neanderthals than to Homo sapiens. Ten years later, they found a bone fragment of a girl born to a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.

By sequencing the DNA of three Neanderthals who lived 38,000 to 53,000 years ago, they found that their Y chromosomes had more in common with those of modern humans. On the other hand, other research has shown that Neanderthal mitochondria, the cellular machinery that converts sugar into energy, had almost the same fate.

These genes are passed down from mother to child, so when they found the first modern human mitochondria in Neanderthals in 2017, they determined that our ancestors also had sex with Neanderthals.

How were your sexual organs?

Regarding their genitals, neither in Neanderthals nor in the Denisovan subspecies was found the gene for spiny penises, so they consider that they had smooth penises, like humans. Other species, on the other hand, such as chimpanzees, have penises with spikes which they suspect serve to remove semen from sexual rivals or irritate the vagina so that the female cannot mate for a period of time. time.

The fact that Neanderthals and Denisovans had smooth penises, they claim, suggests that it was monogamous species. Researchers also believe that Neanderthals had more sex than modern humans.