Neanderthal : Picture for the inside

We three groups were all enough alike that some of our ancestors could interbreed and produce fertile offspring. But the differences in the genomes of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans are also revealing the genetic traits that set us apart from them—the traits that made us human. I’ve been comparing it to the pictures of Earth that came back from Apollo 8. The Neanderthal genome gives us a picture of ourselves, from the outside looking in, says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in his blog on paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution. We can see, and now learn about, the essential genetic changes that make us human—the things that made our emergence as a global species possible.

 » The Neanderthal in My Family Tree, Slate.com.

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