Are you a Neanderthal?

When you hear Neanderthal, you probably think of a primitive barbarian with a low brow, big forehead, and a huge nose. Research from the past up until recently has hailed the Neanderthal as a brutish species exterminated by early humans which also led to the claim that the interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals was impossible. However, a recent article published 2010 in Science begs to differ. Using bioinformatics scientist compared the Neanderthal genomes to European Americans, East Asians, West Africans, and chimpanzee genomes. The results show that present day non-Africans share genetic ancestry with Neanderthals (1-4%).

This amazing new finding suggests a whole new perspective on the origins of humans. The original theory says there was bottleneck event due to the expansion of a small population out of Africa. This small population of early humans was believed to be biologically distinct from other early hominoids. The idea of early humans interbreeding with Neanderthals has been a controversial dispute. However these new findings suggest that the small population that migrated out of Africa did in fact mate with Neanderthals then spread out to populate the rest of the world.

Many may look at this new information and shrug it off. I think this is an extraordinary finding that challenges not only past scientific research done on Neanderthals but the underlying social beliefs of people. The popular belief is that the Neanderthal is a lesser human species that was hairy, ugly, and had little cognitive ability and thus was driven to extinction. Many believe that Neanderthals were thwarted and driven to extinction by the mighty early Homo sapiens. Although history is written by the victors, apparently the Neanderthals had the last laugh. Genetics show that all non-African Homo sapien lineages are descended from Neanderthals. So think twice before you try insulting someone by calling them a “Neanderthal” because chances are (if your not 100% African) you share 1-4% of your genome with those “barbarians”.

Green, Richard E. “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome.” Science 328

Green, Richard E. “Anaylsis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA.” Nature 444, 330-336