

Our Lost Cousins, the Neanderthals - benbreen
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/02/13/our-lost-cousins-neanderthals/O2cSNRBhPjcJYl76EoDAxK/story.html

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tokenadult
This is an interesting article, and is a good supplement to the recent _New
Yorker_ article about Neanderthal hominins.[1] I think the best point made in
the article comes part way down with the expert quotation, "'It’s a great time
to be researching Neanderthals because we’re learning so quickly,' said Steven
Churchill, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. 'But
it’s a horrible time to write a book,' he added with a laugh. New information
is arriving at such a fast pace that it’s difficult for even scholars to keep
up." That's about right. The article kindly submitted here does a good job of
reviewing some of the back-and-forth about how _Homo sapiens_ has thought
about Neanderthal fossils and what archaeology suggests about our near cousins
over the years, with a variety of different ideas about Neanderthals coming
and going. The latest word is that Neanderthals were smarter than we used to
think.[2]

Of course the article mentions that there are traces of gene assemblages that
were first found in ancient Neanderthal DNA that are actually fairly
commonplace in living human beings (which is the main point of the _New
Yorker_ article). So in that sense, the Neanderthals are not so much "lost
cousins" as common ancestors among other ancestors of our brothers and
sisters. Neanderthal genes live on in you and me, more than likely.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-
comment/neanderthals](http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-
comment/neanderthals)

[2] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/resear...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/research-finds-neanderthals-were-more-thoughtful-than-we-once-
imagined/2015/01/19/c848f040-71ac-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html)

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lisa_henderson
"Neanderthal genes live on in you and me, more than likely."

That's mostly true for people who descend from people living in Europe and
parts of Asia. Less so for anyone who primarily descends from Africa or
Australian aborigines.

