In Some of Us, They Live On
If you’ve ever been behind one on the freeway, if you’ve ever encountered one on the phone, if you’ve ever seen one on TV, you won’t be surprised that a new “landmark” scientific study has confirmed that Neanderthals live among us. You knew it all the time, right? And, yet, it’s always nice to have science to back you up, isn’t it? But, I have to say that, as a chiropractor and from a purely “structural” standpoint, the finding did surprise me a bit. I treat the entire musculoskeletal system, from the cranium to the phalanges, and I’ve never noticed a striking resemblance, at least as far as the skeletal structure is concerned, between today’s “man” and the museum speciman that lived some 200,000 years ago. And, I would bet my coccyx that humankind is physically far healthier than the poorly-postured Neanderthals of old.
But, the finding surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested that Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our inheritance, and though the contribution still appears to be small (in some places, but perhaps larger in your area), the study did confirm that living humans today can overwhelmingly trace their ancestry to a small population of Neanderthals who left the African continent to populate the rest of the world between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Professor Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, put it this way: “They are not totally extinct. In some of us they live on, a little bit.” And, he should know. Professor Paabo and fellow biologists have sequenced the whole Neanderthal genome.
So, the next time you’re tempted to gesture at that driver who cut you off on the freeway, or cuss out that customer service representative on the phone, or throw a shoe at the TV, just remember: Somewhere in an ancestry far, far, away, that Neanderthal you’ve encountered just might be a member of your family.
Much more “pertinent” information can be found in Thursday’s issue of Science
Comments
Funny stuff! And I thought all the Neanderthals living among us were at car shows!