Archeologists entertain themselves

And it's not how you think, pervert!  It's by vicariously watching ancient populations makin' bacon, through genetic analysis of their dusty old bones (smirk).

Now remember, these scientist guys get money through research grants by making headlines, so take this kind of thing with a huge grain of salt, but still....

   "The ancient genomes, one from a Neanderthal and one from a different archaic human group, the Denisovans, were presented on 18 November at a meeting at the Royal Society in London. They suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups living in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet unknown human ancestor from Asia.

“What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a ‘Lord of the Rings’-type world — that there were many hominid populations,” says Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London who was at the meeting but was not involved in the work."

Somehow this finding is more salacious when presented at the stuffy, Victorian sounding "Royal Society" in London.

Still, if accurate (a big if), it seems like quite an orgy in the Neolithic age.

   "The new Denisovan genome indicates that this enigmatic population got around: Reich said at the meeting that they interbred with Neanderthals and with the ancestors of human populations that now live in China and other parts of East Asia, in addition to Oceanic populations, as his team previously reported. Most surprisingly, Reich said, the new genomes indicate that Denisovans interbred with another extinct population of archaic humans that lived in Asia more than 30,000 years ago, which is neither human nor Neanderthal."

Interspecies breeding!  Those cave men really were cave men!  "Thag horny!  Bring Thag hot Denisovian babe, in leopard bikini, preferably!" "If not, Thag happy with mystery babe!"

And that's the attitude that explains why we are the way we are today.