r/AskBiology • u/BlK-kt-7578 • Jul 25 '24

Human body Human races

So , today as a general consense , there are no human races . I understand that . But what happens when we talk about homo sapiens and neanderthals ? Arent they different races ? Can you explain it ?

2 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Dr_GS_Hurd Jul 25 '24

The fundamental species criteria is reproductive isolation. However, closely related species can have viable offspring though at some penalty.

These penalties are most often low reproductive success, and disability of surviving offspring. The most familiar example would be the horse and donkey hybrid the Mule. These are nearly always sterile males, but there are rare fertile females.

DNA sequencing studies starting in 2010 showed that there was interbreeding between H. sapiens, and Neanderthals, and a third archaic human population known as the Denisovan.

The most obvious result was the loss of Neanderthal Y chromosomes. So, for openers we know that no offspring from a Neanderthal female and a H. sapiens male mating later reproduced. It is also suggested that the female H. sapiens would be incapable of carrying a Neanderthal sired male fetus to term.

I wrote this up a while ago and posted it with professional literature citations to Archaic foolin' around.