As it looks right now, the Neanderthal, long recognized as a more bestial, savage, less evolved, hairier, and uglier strain of human being, who died out tens of thousands of years ago (unless they survive into the present day as Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman), may not have died out at all. Parts of them survive. Their DNA is still extant, inside of us. We modern humans, to greater or lesser degrees, are carrying around Neanderthal DNA, the result of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals some 50,000 years ago. And that Pleistocene hook-up may be to blame for some of the suffering from inherited ailments like depression. (Since I have this bugbear myself, I guess I’m part Neanderthal. I’m thinking my lovely better half could have told you that, though.)
I still don’t quite get the specifics of it. Usually, a hybrid of two related but separate species is sterile. Ligers, for example. Mules. (Most of ‘em.) Maybe it’s nature’s way of keeping new species from supplanting their sires, but typically hybrid offspring cannot reproduce. Yet the Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal mash-ups must have been able to do so, to have passed their (defective?) DNA on down to us. This all sounds pretty fantastical, but it’s backed up by legit scientific evidence. All this does make me wonder, though. Could a human and a Sasquatch reproduce? (I’ve seen some people who make me suspect they already have.)
