Neandertal genome like ours
(There may be Neandertals at your next family reunion!)

by Robert W. Carter

Although the conclusions are controversial, scientists are triumphantly claiming an amazing feat within modern genetics. They have completed a draft sequence for approximately 60% of the Neandertal genome.

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In several recent articles on the Neandertal mitochondrial genome,3,4,5 I was hesitant to make many predictions about the full Neandertal nuclear genome because I had questions about the quality of ancient DNA (aDNA) and because I was not sure if I could trust the data, since it would have been thoroughly filtered by the evolutionary gatekeepers. Even if I had made predictions, I would not have dared to make any as bold as the conclusions of these evolutionary scientists. Needless to say, I am quite pleased with what they said. This is certainly not the last word, though, as there is always controversy within such forensic science.

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Third, the authors tested for evolutionary relationships (in which they assumed any similarities are due to common ancestry) among apes, Neandertals and various groups of modern humans. This is where the real controversy lies, for the answers they came up with are not what most expected. They discovered that (1) Neandertals are well within the range of diversity of modern man, that (2) the Neandertal genome is incredibly similar to the genome of modern man, and that (3) there are only a few fixed differences between modern man and Neandertals. But even those few fixed differences could vanish as we learn more about modern human and ancient Neandertal genetic diversity (the more we study, the more variation we find and so the “fixed” differences tend to be reduced over time).

Even more controversial, the few variations that Neandertals share with modern humans are only shared with people living outside of Africa. So, not only are Neandertals fully human, but the evidence is that they interbred with the ancestors of modern Europeans, Asians, Australians, and Native Americans, but not Africans. Thus, Neandertals are either the cousins or the ancestors to people outside Africa. The lead author attests to this unexpected result, “ … we were baffled that this affinity with Neandertals was not only in Europe and West Asia [where it was most expected], but also in Papua New Guinea … ”