Got a Brawny Build? You Might Be Able to Thank Your Neanderthal Ancestors, According to a New Study

New research hints that some living people inherited a gene variant from Neanderthals that has made them slightly taller and more muscular than their peers

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

August 11, 2026 10:00 a.m.

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Neanderthals lived across Europe and Asia between roughly 400,000 and 40,000 years ago. Before our stocky cousins went extinct, some of them interbred with modern humans, leaving traces of their genetic material in our gene pool. Today, most people of non-African ancestry have inherited between 1 and 4 percent of their genetic makeup from Neanderthals.

Now, researchers say this lingering Neanderthal DNA could be influencing our physical development. Some people alive today might be taller and more muscular because of a certain gene variant passed down from Neanderthals during interbreeding tens of thousands of years ago, according to a study published August 5 in the journal Current Biology.

The findings center on the human growth hormone pathway. This process begins when the brain’s pituitary gland releases these hormones into the bloodstream. Then, they bind to certain receptors, proteins on cell surfaces, in muscles and bones, signaling them to grow. Alterations to this process—including changes in the amount or timing of growth hormones—can affect a person’s stature.

Researchers suspected that compared with Homo sapiens, Neanderthals may have had genetic variations affecting this pathway. That might partially explain the species’ “physical robustness”—including thicker bones, broader chests and larger muscles than those of living humans—the study authors write in the paper.

In the new work, the team first looked at differences in the genetic instruction books, or genomes, of modern humans and Neanderthals. Analysis revealed two DNA variants in the gene encoding the growth hormone receptor. They consistently showed up together in examined DNA of present-day people.

This form of the gene, called an allele, appeared to be most prevalent among individuals of South Asian and East Asian ancestry, with up to 24 percent of people in a population carrying it, the team found. By comparison, it was found in only 0.5 percent of Europeans and 2 percent of people of Indigenous American descent.

This finding complicates the long-held assumption that Neanderthals probably had a distinctly European-like physique and appearance. “After all, the Neanderthals are best known from their European fossil record,” John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not involved with the research, tells Nature’s Mohana Basu. “But European groups don’t manifest this particular allele nearly as often as Asian populations.”

The scientists also wanted to know whether the gene variant affected the growth and development of individuals who currently carry it. So, they analyzed the biometric data of more than 1.1 million adults from five global biobanks. The analysis revealed that people who have the Neanderthal variant were an average of 0.12 inches taller and weighed about 0.6 pounds more than those who do not carry it.

“When we looked more closely at where that weight increase comes from, we saw that it’s an increase in lean muscle mass,” study co-author Philipp Kanis, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, tells Science’s Michael Price.

Modern humans with the Neanderthal variant also tend to have subtle, Neanderthal-like physiological traits, including shorter tooth roots and a shorter ramus, the vertical part of the rear jawbone, located by the ear, the researchers found.

To measure the variant’s effects on the human growth hormone pathway more directly, the researchers grew cells with either the Neanderthal gene variant or the modern human variant. Then, they exposed both types of cells to growth hormones. Those with the Neanderthal variant responded more strongly to the growth hormones: Over five days, they multiplied into nearly 40 percent as many cells compared with those with the modern human variant.

Taken together, the evidence suggests the recently identified gene variant might have played a role in Neanderthals’ distinctive appearance. And because of interbreeding between H. sapiens and our extinct relatives roughly 47,000 years ago, the allele might still be at work, making some living people’s builds ever so slightly more Neanderthal-like.

“What struck me most was that two very different types of evidence told the same story,” Kanis says in a statement. “Cells grown in the laboratory responded more strongly, while data from more than a million people showed signs of the same effect in the body. It is rare to see laboratory and population evidence fit together so clearly.”

The researchers, however, stress that the variant is likely just one piece of a much larger genetic puzzle. Numerous genes affect growth and body shape, and this particular variant “cannot explain the Neanderthal body type on its own,” study co-author Hugo Zeberg, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, says in the statement.

“And,” he adds, “it certainly does not determine a person’s overall appearance.”

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.