Link: https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-27/neanderthal-men-chose-homo-sapiens-women-genetics-reveals-the-sex-life-of-our-ancestors.html

Source paper: Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased (closed access 😭)

why is there so little Neanderthal DNA on the X chromosome of modern humans? The researchers considered two hypotheses. The first is that the Neanderthal genes on this chromosome were detrimental to our species and were eliminated by natural selection. The second hypothesis is that the Neanderthal X chromosome never became established in our genetic makeup because interbreeding occurred primarily between Neanderthal males and Homo sapiens females: the sons of these couples would have inherited the X chromosome from their human mother, not their Neanderthal father.

The simple explanation is that one of the main advantages humans had, was how fast we could pump out babies...

Even if cross species pairing happened at an equal rate, the neanderthal males and human females would reproduce at a rate as high as human/human.

But neanderthal females and human males would reproduce as slowly as neanderthal/neanderthal couples.

Because neanderthal genes on a Y chromosome didn't have negative select rated of lowered birth rate, that's obviously where they'd hide out the longest.

The article is confusing successful reproductive rates with boning...

Is that something well established? (I genuinely know nothing about it, but find it really interesting).

If so, then this article comes off rather amateurish (you were kinder, lol).

Is that something well established?

We're talking about neanderthals who went extinct like 40k years ago...

Nothing is really "well established".

But yeah, them having a lower reproductive rate has been pretty widely accepted for a while. They were as smart as us and waaaay stronger and with better immune system.

About the only thing modern humans have going for us is we're basically the sapian equivalent of cancer. Neanderthals barely reproduced enough to keep their own numbers up, so when humans showed up and added a bunch of new mouths, it was just a numbers game.

It's never going to be just one thing tho. Another big theory is the neanderthal Y chromosome triggered an immune response in human females which resulted in male hybrids not being carried to term, while female hybrids could be.

I just glanced over this article, but it ignores a lot of prior research and most importantly:

The article is confusing successful reproductive rates with boning…

Who knows who was choosing who back then or why. The best we can tell is whose babies went on to have more babies, and sometimes with who.

Oh, I get its hard to say "well established" - not sure the right way to put that as anything from 40k years ago is difficult, at best.

Is it accepted within the communities that studies such things that Neanderthals had a lower reproduction rate than homo sapiens? (Sounds like it is).

Lol, your description of HS reproduction - I'll be quoting that!

We all have our kinks.

Isn’t there an inherent bias in that if the children stayed with the mothers, and since modern humans ended up surviving, while Neanderthals ultimately died out, that the surviving progeny that became our ancestors would have been the mix of modern human women with Neanderthal men. But, I guess this makes the assumption that women stayed with their group and didn’t leave, or get captured by other groups.

Some things never change.