Human Ancestries: The Place of Neandertals and Denisovans

Today's lecture covered an important and newly developing picture of human history. As noted, humans seem to have always interbred with neighboring groups and there never seem to have been distinct biological "races" as they have been understood in the last couple centuries of American history. For any of those interested, here's a couple of blog posts that influenced my coverage in class today (Living Anthropologically's Admixture All the Way Down and Torso and Oblong's Talking About Ancient and Modern Peoples).

On a related note, since we're talking about breeding between different populations, I wanted to remind you what anthropologists believe that Neandertals looked like.  Not like an ape or other kind of bestial monstrosity, but a lot like you and me.