Opinion Once upon a love story, starring Neanderthals
Researchers argue that not only did Neanderthals, like chimps, bonobos and humans, kiss each other — but human beings too
There has been a focus on competition — and not nearly enough on cooperation. 
For over 1,00,000 years, Homo Sapiens warred with the Neanderthals for supremacy — a battle to the death, literally. Eventually, the early modern humans won out, and Neanderthals went extinct. And that was the only story ever told. But in these millennia of co-existence, conflict and competition weren’t the only way the two species engaged with each other. They shared DNA, 99.7 per cent of it, practices like burying their dead, wearing jewellery, making art — and families. A new study from the University of Oxford substantiates this claim: Humans and Neanderthals were in love too, not just at war.
The researchers, studying the evolutionary history of kissing across species, came up with a simple explanation for a shared oral microbe between Neanderthals and humans. Coupled with evidence of interbreeding as late as 50,000 years ago, the researchers argue that not only did Neanderthals, like chimps, bonobos and humans, kiss each other — but human beings too.
There has been a focus on competition — and not nearly enough on cooperation. Robert Ardrey and Raymond Dart’s “killer ape theory” posited that war and interpersonal aggression was the driving force behind human evolution. While cooperative competition is part of the history of survival, this hardly tells the whole story. For instance, bonobos, along with chimps, the closest evolutionary cousins of Homo Sapiens , privilege cooperation. Like humans, they live in communities and their tools of choice are affection, negotiation and loyalty. In a world focused on differences and obsessed with the rat race, it may help to get better at love, not war.
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