99.5 Percent Like a Neanderthal

New York Times Editorial

Scientists are tantalizingly close to learning just what genetic changes distinguish modern humans from Neanderthals, who went extinct some 30,000 years ago. The issue is important to experts who want to understand evolution, but also to people who deem themselves a cut above these early cousins, whose name we have turned into an insult.

Two research teams announced this week that they have assembled parts of a Neanderthal man’s genetic code from a fossil bone and teased out some preliminary information. Two experts called it the most significant advance in the field since the first Neanderthal fossils were discovered 150 years ago.

As it turns out, the genome of this particular Neanderthal — who lived some 38,000 years ago — is more than 99.5 percent identical to the genome of modern humans. The great similarity is yet more proof that Charles Darwin had it right when he viewed all life as descended from common ancestry whose genes, we now know, were passed down and modified through the ages. The new studies deduce that modern humans and Neanderthals were descended from a common forebear but parted on separate evolutionary paths at least 450,000 years ago.