Television often offers us a window into worlds and professions we do not ordinarily interact with. Shows featuring doctors, lawyers, scientists, and officers of the law have proven to be incredibly popular time and time again. One such show is, Bones, a dramedy
An imagining of what a family compromised of H. Sapiens and Neanderthals may have looked like.
combining crime solving, forensic science, and anthropology. The accuracy of the science featured on Bones, and in other shows in the genre, is often questioned. In 2013 Fox aired an episode titled, The Archaeologist in the Cocoon. The episode culminated in the discovery of a half Homo neanderthalensis, half Homo sapiens family.
The idea for the episode was likely sparked by a 2010 discovery by the Neanderthal Genome Project.
This is an interpretation of what a Neanderthals may have looked like.
According to a study they conducted, the modern, non-African human shares as much as 2.5% of it’s DNA with the Neanderthals of the past. Evidence suggests that the interbreeding between Neanderthals and our Homo Sapiens ancestors occurred in Eurasia. It has been hypothesized that the Y chromosome of the Neanderthal was incompatible with that of the Homo Sapiens females, often resulting in miscarriages. This could explain why we do not currently carry more of the Neanderthal DNA in our own genes.
In 2012, Dr. Rachel Wood, found compelling evidence that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens inhabited the Earth 8,000 years apart, making interbreeding impossible. Wood suggested we fail to reject the null hypothesis, that interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens produced offspring. However, recent findings documented in Science News, support not only the idea of relations between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens but also of relations between Homo Sapiens and Denisovans. Denisovans are hominids that walked the Earth at the same time as the Neanderthals. According to research done by a joint effort between Harvard Medical School and UCLA, those of South Asian descent are likely to share Denisovans genetics. The genes we have maintained from our Denisovans and Neanderthal predecessors may help us to fight off certain infections and illnesses.
Denisovans male.
These recent findings have fascinating implications for the scientific world and our understanding of human evolution. Homo Sapiens, Denisovans, and Neanderthals were not originally thought to have existed at the same time. The evidence of DNA from Denisovans and Neanderthals in modern human beings, like you and I, make this incredibly unlikely.