You mean like "donkeys and horses" or "lion and tigers"?
"but somehow I still think It's possible that they mis-interpreted the genetic evidence"
You make my point. Rather than saying, "But this evidence says so and so and I believe they are wrong because.....", you are saying, "I don't want to believe what they say, so without any evidence, I say they are wrong, or they could be wrong, which adds enough doubt, it proves they are wrong". While my position, with no evidence whatsoever, could be right.
I certainly do believe they could be right.
I just make a contrary point.
But for them to be right and there to be a mix of Neanderthal in our genetic make up today seems to be enough of a stretch that I will look forward to how this will turn out in the future.
The fact that the intermingling of genes occured in Europe, to me, adds to the validity a great deal because we know that there were encounters between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neandertalensis in Europe but not in Africa.
It was also a one way preservation of those genes, because Homo Neanderthal did not survive, and it seems doubtful while they did survive that there was anything other than occasionally isolated events of genetic comingling. The fact that they are no longer around because of a failure to be able to compete suggests we played a role in their demise.
I find it more fascinating to spend time considering the situations and subsequent events that permanently imbedded those genes in our dna, because of the fact that this was certainly a case of "them" and "us," and so it was an inherently hostile situation.
I doubt that it came about because of any sort of physical "attraction of opposites", which was an interpretation I read in a variation of the same report in today's WSJ.
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