Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania just dropped a bombshell in the journal Science that has made every man alive feel slightly worse about himself, which is saying something given the current baseline. According to a new genetic analysis, when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens got together to make prehistoric whoopee, the pairings overwhelmingly followed one very specific pattern: Neanderthal dads, human moms. Every. Single. Time.
The researchers figured this out by examining why the human X chromosome is basically a “Neanderthal desert,” suspiciously devoid of Neanderthal DNA compared to our other chromosomes. When they examined Neanderthal genomes, they found the opposite: an excess of human DNA on the Neanderthal X. The math only works one way. Neanderthal males were consistently mating with human females. Not the reverse. The study, published in Science, in the most delicate language peer review would allow, attributed this to “mate preference.” Which is the clinical way of saying that Homo sapiens women, across interbreeding events spanning two hundred thousand years, kept choosing the Neanderthals. This wasn’t a one-time lapse in judgment at a Pleistocene office party. This was a pattern. A quarter-million-year booty call.
The female ancestors encoded in our chromosomes looked across the tundra at the available options and said, “Give me the one who can open a jar with his face.”
And honestly? It starts to make a terrible kind of sense.
The Profile
Imagine, if you will, a Neanderthal’s dating profile. We’ll call him Grog. His skull is the size of a bowling ball, his resting heart rate is “predator,” and he has never once asked anyone how their day was.
Grog, 28 (life expectancy 30, so technically a silver fox) 📍 Iberian Peninsula (will relocate for the right cave)
Enjoys: long walks through the tundra, carrying large animals over uneven terrain, staring at fire for hours without talking. Can bench-press an aurochs. Looking for someone who appreciates a prominent brow ridge and doesn’t mind a guy who communicates primarily through meaningful grunts. 420 friendly (will eat literally anything, including things that are still moving).
Not looking for: drama, anyone who’s going to ask me to “use my words,” saber-toothed cats, vegans.
Now compare that to the Homo sapiens competition:
Thag, 26 (emotionally: 14) 📍 Wherever my “art” takes me
Enjoys: painting on walls, talking about painting on walls, explaining what my wall paintings mean to people who did not ask. Currently between hunts (seven moons and counting). My buddy says I’m “really talented” and “ahead of my time.” Looking for someone who can support my creative vision and also do most of the gathering. And the cooking. And the shelter maintenance. I’m more of an ideas guy.
Not looking for: commitment, anyone who asks where the meat is, labels.
Ladies of the Pleistocene, I ask you: who are you swiping right on? The guy who can carry a dead elk home in each arm, or the guy who wants you to come look at his new ochre smudge and tell him it’s transcendent? The guy who shows up with a mammoth haunch and a grunt that says “I provide,” or the guy who shows up empty-handed but has really been thinking about the nature of shadows and would love to unpack that with you over a meal you prepared?
Two hundred and fifty thousand years of genetic data says the women buried in our chromosomes chose correctly.
Meet the Parents
Of course, every relationship eventually reaches the stage where you have to bring the new guy home. And if you think introducing your parents to someone from a different political party is awkward, imagine introducing them to someone from a different species who just ate a raw squirrel in your father’s sitting rock.
Picture it: a human encampment, roughly 47,000 years ago. A young Homo sapiens woman (let’s call her Lila) approaches the family fire with a seven-foot-wide gentleman who has to turn sideways to fit through the cave entrance and smells like something between a wet bison and a moral failing.
“Mom, Dad… this is Grog.”
Grog raises a hand the size of a turkey platter and grunts. He is holding a partially eaten bison femur like a churro.
Dad crosses his arms. Mom smiles tightly. Lila’s little brother pokes Grog’s thigh and nearly breaks his finger.
“So, Grog,” Dad begins, poking the fire with performative authority. “What exactly are your intentions with my daughter?”
Grog stares at the fire. He has been staring at fires for thirty-one years. He is very good at it.
“He’s… strong, Dad,” Lila offers.
“Strong. Great. Wonderful. Can he speak?”
Grog turns slowly, looks at Dad, and crushes the bison femur to powder with one hand.
“He’s also very gentle,” Lila adds quickly.
Mom leans over. “Sweetie, I’m not saying he’s not nice, but have you thought about Thag from the next valley? He paints. He expresses himself.”
“Thag hasn’t brought home a kill in six moons, Mom.”
Silence. Dad stares at the crushed femur dust. Mom quietly reassesses her definition of “provider.” Grog picks a piece of bone from between his teeth with a twig that could be a small tree.
“Welcome to the family, Grog.”
Somewhere behind the cave, Thag is painting a mural about his feelings regarding the situation. Nobody will look at it.
What We Can Learn From Our Ancestors: A Modern Relationship Advice Column
Dear Dr. Phyllis Pleistocene,
I’m a modern woman struggling with the dating scene. Every guy I meet is glued to his phone, talks about his “journey,” has strong opinions about oat milk, and lists “fluent in sarcasm” on his profile like it’s a personality. I’m looking for something… simpler. Possibly nonverbal. Any advice?
– Exhausted in Evansville
Dear Exhausted,
Have you considered that your romantic dissatisfaction might be genetic? A new study from the University of Pennsylvania confirms that for over 200,000 years, human women consistently chose Neanderthal males as partners. We’ve known since Svante Pääbo’s Nobel Prize-winning genome work in 2010 that Neanderthal DNA lives in most of us. Now we know how it got there. These were men who didn’t ghost you. Those men who couldn’t ghost you, because they didn’t understand the concept of object permanence on an emotional level. Men whose idea of “screen time” was staring at a cave wall for nine hours while it dried. Men who had never once described themselves as “entrepreneurs.”
The Neanderthal male offered something our modern dating pool sorely lacks: uncomplicated presence. He showed up. And, he brought food. He probably smelled like something rendered from an animal you’d rather not think about, but he sat near you by the fire. He didn’t ask you to rate the experience on a scale of one to ten. Plus, he didn’t “need space.” His idea of personal space was the radius within which he could still smell danger. He had never heard of therapy, but to be fair, he also hadn’t done anything that required it.
Consider what the Neanderthal male did NOT do:
- Start a podcast
- Describe himself as a “sapiosexual”
- Explain CrossFit
- Ask you to be in a “situationship”
- Use the word “boundaries” while having none
- Send an unsolicited cave painting of his genitals
- Say “I’m not like other Homo”
The science suggests our ancestors understood something we’ve forgotten: sometimes the best partner is the one who can carry you out of an ambush and doesn’t require a processing conversation about it afterward.
The heart wants what the heart wants. And for a quarter of a million years, what the heart wanted had a 1,600-cubic-centimeter skull and the grip strength of a hydraulic press.
– Dr. Phyllis Pleistocene
The Results Are In
[Studio lights. A rowdy audience. A bald man in a suit sits between two visibly tense hominids. The chair on the left has been reinforced with steel. The banner reads: “GROG… ARE YOU THE FATHER?”]
MAURY: Welcome back, everyone. Now, Lila, you say you are one hundred percent certain that Grog is the father of your baby. Is that correct?
LILA: That’s right, Maury. Look at that child’s brow ridge. Look at it. That is not a sapiens brow ridge. That is a shelf. You could set a drink on that forehead. That baby came out of the womb and immediately tried to wrestle the doctor.
MAURY: And Grog, you say the baby is not yours?
GROG: (grunts, crosses arms that are wider than the chair, snaps one of the armrests off accidentally)
MAURY: Well, Grog, we ran the DNA through the University of Pennsylvania genetics lab, and I have the results right here.
(audience screams)
MAURY: Grog… when it comes to 47,000-year-old baby Thunk…
(long pause, audience loses its collective mind, a woman in the third row faints)
MAURY: You ARE the father.
(Grog flips over a boulder that was being used as a coffee table. Four audience members are hospitalized. A cameraman is never seen again. Lila does a victory lap around the stage. The bald man in the suit dives behind what’s left of his chair.)
MAURY: (from behind the chair, reading from a crumpled index card) And according to this study, Grog, you are ALSO the father of roughly two percent of the modern European genome!
(Grog beats his chest. The studio lights flicker and die. Somewhere in Philadelphia, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania quietly updates a spreadsheet and wonders if this is what she went to grad school for.)
Epilogue
The researchers admit that DNA alone can’t tell us whether these ancient hookups were peaceful, voluntary, coerced, or just the inevitable result of proximity and catastrophically bad Pleistocene decision-making fueled by fermented berries and loneliness. It’s the kind of ethical dilemma that makes trolley problems look quaint. The term they settled on was “mate preference,” which is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting for what was almost certainly a far messier and more complicated reality. “Mate preference” is doing the kind of work that “creative differences” does in a Hollywood divorce announcement. As CNN’s coverage put it, the finding is “fascinating and provocative,” which is also how I’d describe any relationship where one partner’s primary language is grunting.
But here’s what we do know: for a span of time so vast it makes the entirety of recorded human civilization look like a typo, human women and Neanderthal men kept finding each other. Across ice ages and migrations, across continents and millennia, the pattern held. Whatever was happening between those two species, it wasn’t random. It wasn’t a fluke. It was, in the coldest and most clinical language science can muster, a preference.
And somewhere, deep in the chromosomes of everyone reading this, is a microscopic genetic receipt proving that a woman who predates agriculture by a geological eternity looked at the available options and said, “I’ll take the one who doesn’t talk much and can kill a cave bear.”
Which, frankly, still sounds better than Hinge. Or Thag. Or replying to spam texts at 2 a.m. because you’re lonely.
Key Takeaways
- New genetic analysis reveals that Neanderthal dads mated with human moms consistently, creating a distinct pattern in our DNA.
- The study explains that human women preferentially chose Neanderthal males over Homo sapiens, indicating a long-standing ‘mate preference.’
- Researchers describe modern dating as lacking in the uncomplicated presence and reliability that Neanderthal males provided.
- The article humorously contrasts Neanderthal males with Homo sapiens men through imagined dating profiles.
- Ultimately, the findings suggest that Neanderthal human mating wasn’t a random occurrence, but rather a deliberate choice over millennia.
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His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos. He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
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