Photo by Peter Burdon on Unsplash
I’ve talked here about a lot of different types of romances: sweet, spicy, closed-door, open, erotica, slow burn. There are additional categories like big-beautiful, omegaverse, and blue alien romance. Popular at the moment is monster erotica, where the female (or male) character falls for a literal monster: sasquatch, Frankenstein’s monster, or a werewolf (not the fuzzy puppy type). Some people go “how deviant!”
So why am I talking about this in my Geeking Science area? Well, because humans have always been like this. They have always been Monster F*ckers.
About 750,000 or so years ago, humans left Africa. These branched off into different species including Neanderthals and Denisovans, with the Neanderthals being more European and Denisovans being more Asian. These likely “interbred with a super archaic population of hominins that had spread out from Africa about 2 million years ago.” (Learn)
Meanwhile, back in Africa, hominins continued to evolve and become the first iteration of homo sapiens. When they left Africa between 300,000 and 60,000 years ago (Wu), they ran into the evolved homo variations of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and, well, interbred with them (fucked them). How do we know? Because their DNA is still in humans. (Choi)
Now, to be clear, it is Europeans who have the highest amount of Neanderthal DNA and Asians/Oceanians who have the highest of Denisovan. One to two percent of all modern humans of European descent have Neanderthal bouncing around in their DNA and about one to six percent of Asians/Oceanians have Denisovan. In addition, since Denisovan were typical of the human family and had interbred with an archaic branch over 2 million years off of everyone else, Asians also have a little bit of that twisted up in the DNA strain. (Choi)
The two areas where the DNA is the strongest are in immune responses and food processing, which makes sense. The more variation a population has to diseases and in food, the better it is able to provide breaks in transmission of diseases and eat when local food production drops. Neanderthal genes also seem to be related to a nap during the day and stay awake late into the night cycle; so if you are a night owl, it may be you are a little more Neanderthal than most. (Lefler)
Science Fiction writers like writing stories about the Uncanny Valley theory, where if something looks ALMOST human, but not exactly, it freaks humans out. The closer the look, while still failing the “is it human” the worse the repulsion. (Perera) This theory is being tested with modern computer simulations and robots, trying to find the line of making a robot or simulation for a video look human enough to be comfortable but different enough to be comfortable – robotics and other technology creators want the familiarity and trust of being human-like without activating the “it is not human but pretending to be us so kill it with fire” reaction.
Some have asked why do we have this reaction and writers of genre (science fiction, fantasy, horror) use to to speculate at one point there was something very, very bad that looked like us, demons or aliens, and we had to destroy them to survive. Scientists speculate it might simply have been the homo sapiens leaving Africa and running into the other branches of hominids, then destroying them.
But…but…evidence says contrary. It seems like humans fucked the uncanny valley siblings. Humans have always been monster fuckers; humans are Uncanny lovers.
Bibliography
Choi, Charles Q. (edited by Kristina Killgrove, Laura Mondragon.) “Scientists discover 2 new ‘ghost’ lineages that contributed DNA to modern humans.” Live Science. 2026 July. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/scientists-discover-2-new-ghost-lineages-that-contributed-dna-to-modern-humans
Learn, Joshua Rappo. “How Do You Tell a Neanderthal from a Denisovan?” Discover magazine. 2021 November 31. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.discovermagazine.com/how-do-you-tell-a-neanderthal-from-a-denisovan-43069
Lefler, Leah. “8 Neanderthal Traits That are Found in Modern Humans.” Owlcation. 2023 December 16. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://owlcation.com/stem/8-neanderthal-traits-in-modern-humans
Perera, Ayesh. “Uncanny Valley: Examples, Effects and Theory.” Simply Psychology. 2026 July 30. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.simplypsychology.org/uncanny-valley.html
Wu, Katerine J. “Modern Humans May Have More Neanderthal DNA Than Previously Though.” Smithsonian magazine. 2020 February 4. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-research-expands-neanderthals-genetic-legacy-modern-humans-180974099/