Is there a bit of Nearderthal in us all?

A recent paper in the journal Science and reported on the BBC website presents research that some of us may be more closely related to Neanderthals that we previously thought. Previous analysis of our evolutionary history suggested that modern humans (Homo sapiens) out-competed the Homo neanderthalis and drove this hominid species to extinction when Homo sapiens migrated north out of Africa.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute managed to extract DNA from Neanderthal bones found in Croatia, and found that there was up to 4% overlap between this DNA and modern human DNA from Europe, Asia and Oceania. This suggests that there was some gene flow between Neanderthals and humans during the 10,000 years during which they co-existed. "They are not totally extinct. In some of us they live on, a little bit," said Professor Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.