Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Caveman Sex But Were Afraid To Ask

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If Quest for Fire* taught us nothing else, it's that our ancestors fucked like animals and looked like a barely made-up Ron Perlman. Well now it appears as if some scientists will soon be able to pinpoint the exact moment when our ancestors began having sex. 

According to Science Magazine (link below), a femur bone belonging to a man who lived some 45,000 years ago is the key to pinpointing the exact date when we decided that we ain't nothing but mammals and did it like they did on the Discovery Channel. 

Uncovered from an eroding riverbank near the village of Ust-Ishim in western Siberia, the femur belonged to a man who lived 45,000 years ago. His DNA was so well preserved that scientists were able to sequence his entire genome,making his the oldest complete modern human genome on record

Now for the sex: Like present-day Europeans and Asians, the Ust-Ishim man has about 2% Neandertal DNA. But his Neandertal genes are clumped together in long strings, as opposed to chopped up into fragments, indicating that he lived not long after the two groups swapped genetic material, as Science reported from the meeting.

The Naturepaper uses further analysis of the length of the strings to propose specific dates: The Ust-Ishim man likely lived 7000 to 13,000 years after modern humans and Neandertals mated, dating the mixing to 52,000 to 58,000 years ago, the researchers conclude. That’s a much smaller window than the previous best estimate of 37,000 to 86,000 years ago.

...among present-day populations, the Ust-Ishim man is more closely related to East Asians than to Europeans. This adds support to the idea that living Europeans inherited some of their genes from a different, unknown source, presumably a population that left Africa later in a separate wave. Whom they had sex with once they arrived is a question that scientists are only beginning to answer.

So yeah, I guess we'll soon find out just how historically inaccurate films like Quest for Fire and Caveman with Ringo Starr truly are.

Actually, I think we already know the answer to one of those.

*Fun fact, the first movie I remember seeing as a child was Quest For Fire. It had just come out on Selectavision and my dad was eager to watch it. Knowing that the film featured no dialogue, Mr. Bankshot thought it would be a good idea to sit three year old Tucker down in front of the TV to watch this epic tale of survival in the time of our ancestors. 100 minutes later, I was scarred for life by the monkey men and the unfathomable amounts of prehistoric violence. Thanks again, Dad!