Did they use a cro magnum?
Early humans are known to interact with Neanderthals. This week, however, researchers revealed the delightful details of these interspecies sex sessions, which reportedly included kissing, flirting, and even transmitting STDs.
Prehistoric cuddling
“When you kiss someone, oral microbes go back and forth between your mouths,” says anthropologist Laura Weyrich of Pennsylvania State University. The researcher stated that these prehistoric peoples exchanged saliva after finding a signature from a human bacteria on a Neanderthal tooth discovered in northwest Spain in 2017, the BBC reported.
By comparing Neanderthals and human microorganisms, Weyrich concluded that the bacterial exchange could be related to 120,000 years ago, “one of the first periods in which we described interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals,” Weyrich said.
Hence the idea of a Neanderthal make-out session.
“It [microbial swapping] could ever have happened, but somehow magically propagated, if it happened that the group of infected people would become very successful, ”she said. “But it could also be something that happened more often.”
And while these saliva providers can also be transmitted through food sharing, there is no evidence that a Neanderthal can prepare meals for a human. Maybe they shared a romantic mammoth tail a la “Lady and the Tramp.”
Interspecies STDs
Unfortunately, bacteria weren’t the only byproduct of this carnal cross-pollination. Researchers believe that our species may have acquired Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Type A by banging our ancestors.
“I’ve tested it thousands of times with computer techniques and the result was always the same – it’s the most likely scenario,” said Ville Pimenoff, an evolutionary geneticist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
Hence, it was very likely that people were cave dwellers on the reg. “It is very unlikely that it happened just once, because then it is more likely that the transmission will not survive any further,” said Pimenoff.
The researcher argues that getting Type A from our ancestors explains why the disease is so malignant in humans – we didn’t have time to build up immunity because we encountered it so early.
Neanderthals may even have infected us with an early recurrence of HIV – a favor we returned by allegedly giving them herpes and other STDs, according to research conducted by evolutionary experts at Stanford University and the University of Arizona.
The progression of masculinity
Did Neanderthals Have Huge Erectus? Hard to say. But a 2013 study found that, like modern humans, Neanderthals lacked the genetic code for penile spines, which our closest living relatives – the infamous promiscuous bonobo chimpanzees – use to compete for females. Our collective ancestors are thought to have lost their sexual traces about 800,000 years ago, the Guardian reported.
As a result, it is likely that these extinct peoples, like us, were predominantly monogamous. So yes, they were faithful even though they slept outside of their kind.
Thag the womanizer
Nonetheless, researchers believe Neanderthals may have slept more than their human compatriots. They deduced this using the oft-controversial method of measuring the difference in the length of their index and ring fingers (which often correlates with the level of testosterone in the womb).
Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans – which have a greater tendency to flirt – have lower digit ratios on average, while both early modern humans and their current brethren had higher, the BBC reported.
When the numerical differences between the Neanderthals fell halfway, scientists reasoned they fooled more than humans – but less than the other great apes.
As if that weren’t enough to change your perception of ancient peoples, recent studies have shown that prehistoric humans may have been chubby hunters and that women weren’t strangers to take home the bacon in 10,000 BC.