The human genome is a rich, complex record of migration, encounters, and inheritance written over thousands of millennia.

A new study exploring Neanderthal-human interbreeding suggests that human women may have preferred Neanderthal men, offering fresh insight into how early interactions between the two groups unfolded.

Even in people with relatively high percentages of Neanderthal DNA, like four percent, there are specific regions of their genomes—particularly on their X chromosomes—that are devoid of it.