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Recordings › Neanderthals And Denisovans & The Islamic Narrative | Mufti Abu Layth · 19 Jan 2022 › Segment 3 of 4

Did humans and Neanderthals interbreed?

muftis

Did Neanderthals and humans interbreed, and do we carry their DNA?

QuestionLive chat · questioner not identifiedAnswered 19 Jan 2022Segment 3 of 4 in the recording2022-01-19-S03

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This segment10:10 to 13:56 · 3 min 46 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

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Yes, but in his view not much: Neanderthal DNA was diluted over generations, leaving non-Africans with about one to four percent.

In more detail

Mufti Abu Layth reads a chat remark that Neanderthals and humans interbred and asks whether humans wiped them out. He says he does not accept that Homo sapiens simply absorbed the Neanderthals; they did interbreed, but he does not think excessively, suggesting that differing scents would have been somewhat off-putting. He thinks it was more often Neanderthal men with some Homo sapiens women, with the children raised in the human tribe so that the Neanderthal DNA was filtered out over generations, leaving non-Africans today with about one to four percent, Europeans the most. He adds that this inheritance contributes to a greater propensity to become addicted to smoking.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified
Neanderthals mated with humans, resulting in offspring; did humans wipe them out?

Position stated

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Mufti Abu Layth says he does not think Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred excessively.

In his words

“they did obviously interbreed i don't think they excessively interbred”

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Category: historical claim

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Kind: general teaching

Transcript

machine10:10 to 13:56 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary

whereas chimpanzees may be about as intelligent as maybe like a three-year-old child so it's not you know there's quite a substantial difference obviously a eight-year-old child nine-year-old child with a sophisticated mature man or woman let's say who 40 year old with the kind of sophistication of the brain that we have is is incredibly complex and we can think in immense abstraction that a child just can't comprehend even you know concepts yet so but they're not

stupid either you know an eight nine year old isn't dumb by any measure right so um the prehistoric timeline is fascinating neanderthals loved making love with humans resulting in an offspring wipe them out um you know that seems to be i don't buy the uh we kind of out we absorbed them i don't buy that they did obviously interbreed i don't think they excessively interbred

i don't think so because you see creatures have a different scent to them and i think they would generally homo sapiens and neanderthals would recognize a kind of difference in scent that would not that would be kind of somewhat off-putting like i don't think they would um like obviously they can see similarities between us and them but they don't see they wouldn't be a kind of like a sexual appeal because we we are just totally different humans and and we would have like i'm

saying we would have fundamental sense to us that maybe we can't smell because we're humans we're hot we're all kind of homo sapiens so we must all have it but they have so like the way animals have a scent or an odor they they would have had an odor that would i'm sure that homo sapiens would have found somewhat repulsive um i'm not saying it would have been totally like you can't totally stand it at all but i'm pretty sure it would have been somewhat repulsive they wouldn't have

found it appealing so hence i think it was the other way i think it was more so neandertal men with some homo sapien women and i think i don't think it was excessively happening but i think it happened on some occasions of obviously you're going to get some and the homo sapien woman is then still with her tribe and she gives birth to the child so the birth so the child carries on and the child has then neanderthal dna but then that child would carry mate with a normal human and so it'll kind of rinse it it'll kind of like

clean it out filter it out so hence today we only have one to four percent um this is non-africans africans don't have any usually neanderthal dna but non-africans i think europeans having the most and then other people as well so all non-africans have some neanderthal dna but it's it's a small amount it's probably anything between one percent to about four percent in between there and it actually contributes for also check this out it contributes for the weakness that humans have to for smoking

so those of you that smoke and you can't seem to give up smoking i am part of that is as a result of what was inherited by the neanderthal dna part of that i mean i'm sure obviously even if you didn't have you could still get affected by smoking but it i think it gives a greater propensity um to being addicted to it that's all right so what is going on

Paragraphs overlapping 10:10 to 13:56. Full text on the recording page.

Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2022-01-19-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/voxmweq6rz4/s/3/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7

Mufti Abu Layth. (2022, January 19). Did humans and Neanderthals interbreed? [Video, segment 2022-01-19-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/voxmweq6rz4/s/3/

Chicago author-date

Mufti Abu Layth. 2022. "Did humans and Neanderthals interbreed?" Video, segment 2022-01-19-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded January 19, 2022. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/voxmweq6rz4/s/3/

BibTeX

@misc{abulayth-2022-01-19-S03,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Did humans and Neanderthals interbreed?}},
  year = {2022},
  month = {1},
  date = {2022-01-19},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/voxmweq6rz4/s/3/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/voxmweq6rz4/s/3/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2022-01-19-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}

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