Lapedo Child was another treasure in the scientific world. At first, it looked like a regular child skeleton that had been specially buried in a spiritual ritual. Even the ochre stained bones, animal bones, charcoal, tiny traces of pollen, the four deer teeth and two periwinkle shells did not raise too much of an attention. Nor did the fact that Lapedo Child was just four when he died, of unknown causes. Everything about Lapedo Child indicated he was a modern human. The chin was modern. The red ocher burial was a common modern human ritual. The Scotch pine in the grave pit was dated to a time when modern humans had inhabited Portugal. However, something didn’t make sense.
Lapedo Child had a confusing jumble of modern human and Neandertal features. The child had the chin and teeth of a modern human, but the jaw was structured like a Neandertal. The shape of the skull was modern, but the lower part was hollow, a attribute only found in Neandertals. They described Lapedo Child’s limbs to be “robust” or powerfully built. After checking the measurements, it really seemed that Lapedo Child was a hybrid between Neandertals and modern humans. However, Neandertals have disappeared from Europe around 29,000 years ago. This finding seems to suggest that Neandertals interbred with modern humans and became part of our family. Unsurprisingly, this new information
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Do some humans still have Neandertal blood? Lapedo Child really intrigued me because I never thought that humans could interbreed with another species. This has prompted me to wonder: Is the modern humans truly, well, human? Or is our species diluted with the genetics of other, less successful hominids? There are so many things that we don’t know about the world we live in, especially the prehistoric past. It’s so intriguing how the past can influence our present perspective of