Modern humans and Neanderthals clearly interbred, genetic evidence shows, but exactly where and when has remained murky. Now, a new study pinpoints where one wave of those encounters occurred — the Zagros Mountains in what is now mostly Iran.
"The geography of the Iranian Plateau has been almost at the crossroads of human migrations," lead author Saman Guran, an archaeologist in the Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne in Germany, told Live Science in an email.
