2026/02/26 by Alexander Platt, Daniel N. Harris, Sarah A. Tishkoff · 1 voice · 4 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Forensic and Genetic Research #Genetic genealogy #Human evolution #Hybrid #Neanderthal #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Preference #Sex characteristics
paper · open access · doi:10.1126/science.aea6774
published in Science 391(6788), 922-925 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 2026/02/26 · openalex created_date 2026/02/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Sex biases in admixture and other demographic processes are recurrent features throughout human evolution. For admixture between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs), sex bias has been proposed as an explanation for the relative lack of Neanderthal ancestry in modern human X chromosomes compared with that in modern human autosomes. By observing a 62% relative excess of AMH ancestry in Neanderthal X chromosomes, we characterized the interbreeding between the two groups as predominantly male Neanderthals with female AMHs. Analytic and numerical modeling presents mate preference as a more parsimonious cause of the sex bias than purely demographic processes with differential patterns of male and female migration.