Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Neanderthal Sex Boosted Immunity In Modern Humans

Posted by timothy on from the check-out-greg-bear's-darwin's-radio dept.

NotSanguine writes "Sexual relations between ancient humans and their evolutionary cousins were critical for our modern immune systems, researchers report (paper itself is subscription only) in the journal Science. Mating with Neanderthals and another ancient group called Denisovans introduced genes that help us cope with viruses to this day, they conclude."

2 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The good old days of evolution... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah, the Republican credo: Tell no SMALL lies. Hitler and his "intelligentsia" were conservatives. You're entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.

  2. Interracial relationships.... by lenski · · Score: 3, Informative

    inter-racial relationships are almost always a white woman and a black man.

    No.

    Look about halfway down the page at a graph showing gender choices in interracial marriages. A smaller fraction of black women intermarry than black men, but the ratio is 22.0 % to 8.9 %. Not "almost always". Additionally, the fraction of mate selection (white, histpanic, asian, other) among those who do intermarry is nearly identical between the genders.

    http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1616/american-marriage-interracial-interethnic?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress

    I should know better.. Don't feed trolls, especially cowards... But this whole race thing needs to be stomped where ever and whenever it appears.