Opinion: Torn between two species

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They never met
Not even briefly
I know what you thought
You thought that they might . . .

I was reminded of those lyrics from the hilarious Martin Mull song when I read the latest twist in my favorite prehistoric tale: the ‘Did they?/Didn’t they?’ story of modern humans and Neanderthals.

The story has toggled back to ‘they didn’t’ -- interbreed, that is. The release of findings from the mapping of Neanderthal DNA indicates, in USA Today’s decorous langauge, that ‘our extinct cousins made ‘very little, if any’ contribution to human genes.’ They may have met, but they probably never did the nasty.

As I have noted before, speculation about whether Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis ever mated long has aroused the prurient interest of amateur anthropologists. It also has provided science writers with an evergreen topic, because scientists keep changing their mind.

The conventional wisdom used to be that the two lines crossed during their relatively brief cohabitation in Europe and Asia, as was supposedly obvious from the fact that some modern people have Neanderthal-like weak chins and protruding brow ridges. Someone even suggested that if you dressed a Neanderthal and gave him a shave and haircut he would be indistinguishable from anyone else in a subway car. (I doubt it, but maybe in a WWE crowd.)

Not long ago, there was even the suggestion that modern humans in Europe and Asia borrowed their brain power from Neanderthals, in the form of a gene called microcephalin-1. Alas, the latest study from the Max Planck Institute seems to render that theory extinct. Neanderthals apparently carried an earlier version of the microcephalin gene.

The study does suggest that Neanderthals and moderns might have shared a different trait. The Neanderthal DNA included a gene known as FOXP2, which is involved in speech and language. So it’s possible that a Neanderthal swain might have asked a human woman to share his cave -- and she said no.