Did Neanderthals give us our Big Brains?

Neanderthals may have given the modern humans who replaced them a priceless gift -- a gene that helped them develop superior brains, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

And the only way they could have provided that gift would have been by interbreeding, teams at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Chicago said.

Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides indirect evidence that modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred at some point when they lived side by side in Europe.

“Finding evidence of mixing is not all that surprising. But our study demonstrates the possibility that interbreeding contributed advantageous variants into the human gene pool that subsequently spread,” said Bruce Lahn, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the University of Chicago who led the study.

[Comment: Fascinating news! How apt it would be if we could prove that the only surviving evidence of interbreeding between us and Neanderthals left us with the big brains we have today. Apt because Neanderthals have previously been seen as so brutish and unkempt.

This could also explain evidence for a Human "cultural explosion" that occured either before, after or exactly at this time.

So perhaps after breeding our way into it, us modern humans radiated out of Europe and West Asia with this brain-enhancing gift from our Neanderthal cousins. Simply fascinating; especially after so much recent news about the discovery of possible hybrid Neanderthal-Sapiens.

Looking forward to reading more about this. ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Reuters.