This is a very interesting article; I've just watched the fascinating little video clip which is a bit mind boggling (ACGT ...)

"To Mate or not to mate?" an interesting article, that puts forth in the last paragraph an alternative scenario as to when the mating actually took place.... Bet this will one will run for ever in scientific circles.

"The alternative is that Neanderthals and modern humans did not necessarily mate with each other.

If the Neanderthal genes had been present in the ancestral African population - which they could have been as the further back we go in time, the closer the lineages were - and were exported into Eurasia, then the pioneers were simply carrying genes that were also present among the Eurasian Neanderthals, derived from an earlier common ancestry.

If those Neanderthal genes were then lost from the great African genetic pool, then they would not be present among Africans today. They would instead only survive among non-Africans.

Until such time as we can discriminate between these two alternatives, the Neanderthal-modern human mating option can only be regarded as a best-case scenario, based on the principle of parsimony."

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8674068.stm

Thanks Moss,

I've just read the above well written article by Clive Finlayson (Director of Gibralter Museum) - it seems the question that has forever puzzled anthropologists remains unanswered. I liked his use of the word parsimony (in the last sentence) which I always thought meant frugality or thrifty. It can also be interpreted, as Clive Finlayson has, as:-

"Adoption of the simplest assumption in the formulation of a theory or in the interpretation of data ..." (online definition).