Scientists Find Evidence that Humans and Neanderthals Mated Ouside of Africa
It's long been known that Neanderthals and early Cro-Magnon man coexisted early on, but it has never been established how or why Neanderthals went extinct well before the advent of civilization. Some theories include inter-species warfare, or even inter-breeding that eventually "bred out" the Neanderthal line. In fact, author Jean Auel and others have made a career of postulating what the relationship between early humans and Neanderthals may have looked like. Michael Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead even reimagined the story of Beowulf as fighting not dragons or monsters, but a race of mountain-dwelling Neanderthals that cannibalized the local human population. According to recent findings by the University of Montreal Pediatrics, as reported on Wired Science, there is strong evidence of what that relationship may have actually looked like, and it seems Neanderthals and early humans were close...very close.