What makes a morning person a morning person? If you’re thinking “archaic human ancestry,” then you’re spot on. According to a new paper published in Genome Biology and Evolution, genetic material from the Neanderthals may be actively influencing our modern circadian clocks, turning some of us into morning larks rather than night owls.
“By analyzing the bits of Neanderthal DNA that remain in modern human genomes, we discovered a striking trend,” says John A. Capra, a geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco and an author of the new paper, in a statement. “Many of them have effects on the control of circadian genes in modern humans, and these effects are predominantly in a consistent direction of increasing propensity to be a morning person.”
Read More: The Strange Sleeping Habits of Homo Sapiens
