When writer Jean M. Auel first published her now bestselling novel, “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” back in 1980, she made what seemed a questionable conceit at the center of her story: that our distant ancestors had mated with Neanderthals, our closest relative in the evolutionary tree of humanity, long ago in prehistory.

It was hugely controversial back then, but a 2010 study of the Neanderthal genome later revealed evidence that her assertion had been correct: traces of Neanderthal DNA are sprinkled throughout our genome, hinting at romance — or perhaps conquest and rape.

Now a new study, led by Oxford University and published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, sheds even more light onto the mystery with an exciting conclusion: humans and Neanderthals very likely engaged in som

See Full Page