Life's Great Mysteries - Could a human and a Neanderthal fall in love?

I'm kind of a romantic. I don't write traditional romance novels, but nearly all my sci-fi books include a romantic relationship that develops over the course of whichever series it's in.

My most unusual fictional romantic relationship is in my Across Horizons series. Why is it unusual? Because the male is of the species Homo sapiens and the female is of the species Homo neanderthalensis.

That's right, they are two different species.

At first thought, this may seem weird. But that's probably because we live in a time in which there is only one surviving species of hominin. Hominins are the group of mammals that includes humans and all of the extinct species that are similar to us—Neanderthals, Australopithicus, Homo erectus, Denisovans, and others too numerous to list here.

Throughout history, there were long stretches of time when Homo sapiens existed at the same time as several other human-like species, including Neanderthals. And the different species interacted.

Is it possible that a human and a Neanderthal could fall in love? We can't know for sure, but we do know, with certainty, that before Neanderthals went extinct 40,000 years ago, humans and Neanderthals mated and produced hybrid offspring. How do we know this? Because almost all modern humans have remnant Neanderthal DNA. From 1% to about 4% of most people's DNA is Neanderthal, depending on the region of the world they are descended from. People with recent Sub-Saharan African ancestry have the least amount because their ancestors did not migrate north out of Africa and intermix with the Neanderthals living in Europe.

So, we know humans and Neanderthals had babies together, but we cannot know if they fell in love. I like to think they did. Which is one of the reasons I enjoyed writing the Across Horizons series.

Skyra is an extraordinary Neanderthal woman. Lincoln is an extraordinary human man who happens to have developed a device that allows him to transport drones back in time to collect environmental data from the past. When Lincoln is forced to use his device to send himself back in time 47,000 years... well, as you can guess, the two meet. But what you probably can't guess is how their relationship triggers a sequence of events that echo far into the future.

IMAGE ONE is Skyra and Lincoln talking to Lincoln's drone, named Ripple.

Interestingly, none of the Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is from female Neanderthals. We know this because no Neanderthal mRNA exists in humans today (I'm talking about mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed down from mother to offspring). I won't get into the details, but this means that all the Neanderthal DNA in humans today came from Neanderthal men mating with human women, instead of Neanderthal women mating with human men. This suggests it's possible that offspring from a Neanderthal woman impregnated by a human man may have been sterile (biologically incapable of reproducing). But we know offspring from a human woman impregnated by a Neanderthal man were not sterile.

The premise of my story is a male human and female Neanderthal falling in love and producing offspring. Does the information above make this premise impossible? Not really. It's possible that, in every instance of human men mating with Neanderthal women, the women and their offspring stayed with their Neanderthal tribes, and they and their offspring eventually went extinct along with all the other Neanderthals. It's also possible that the Neanderthal women and their hybrid offspring simply died due to other causes. After all, life was almost certainly harsh that long ago—predators, disease, war with human tribes, war with other Neanderthal tribes, and much more.

Back to the question that fascinates me... if a human male from the future appeared 47,000 years in the past and encountered a Neanderthal female, could they fall in love?

A lot of factors could reduce the chances of this happening. In my story, Skyra already hates humans. In her time (47,000 years ago), in the area that is now Spain, human tribes had traveled north out of Africa and had already been interacting with Neanderthals for thousands of years. Skyra hates humans because they frequently attack her tribe, and a ruthless band of humans captured and abused Skyra's sister. Skyra wants to kill every human man she encounters, especially the leader of her sister's tormentors.

​IMAGE TWO is Skyra facing off with her sworn human enemy. This confrontation does not end well.

So, when Skyra encounters Lincoln, a strange human man from the future, her thoughts have nothing to do with attraction or passion. And I would imagine this was the case in real life when Neanderthal women encountered human men. More often than not, violence was probably the outcome.

But there can always be exceptions, right?

Maybe a more important question is, were Neanderthals even capable of experiencing love? We don't know. And we don't know if they had monogamous relationships. But if they did have monogamous relationships, we can assume that the male and female would instinctively protect each other and nurture each other through sickness and injury. And isn't that the foundation of love? Isn't that how humans developed strong bonds of affection for each other?

So, I like to believe Neanderthals could love. We already know humans experience love, so my opinion is that Lincoln and Skyra falling in love is not impossible.

Of course, their relationship is only one thread to the epic Across Horizons story, which is told in five novels—IMAGE THREE.

If you haven't read the series yet, I'm confident you will enjoy the adventure. Check it out here:
https://www.amazon.com/Across-Horizons/dp/B086PCFB68

Photo Credits:
Images of Skyra with Lincoln and with her human enemy - Midjourney