Chapter 12:

In the Das Neandertal, Germany, the remains of the Neanderthal. Now it's seen more as a tourist attraction, with everything being Neanderthal themed and even a museum. The remains were found by some workers during the 19th century and ever since then scientists have found them all throughout Europe and the Middle east. Not only were the remains of Neanderthals found, but also their tools such as knives and even clothing. Scientists used to believe that they became extinct due to natural disasters or disease but now scientists are realizing that it might’ve been because of the Homo sapiens. Modern humans first came out 4 thousand years ago and traveled to where the Neanderthals were. Before they killed them, the modern humans interbred with Neanderthals which is why most people today are 4% Neanderthal. Kolbert visited the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and met Svante Pääbo, the head of the department of evolutionary genetics. He hopes that one day humans can sequence the entire Naeanderthal genome to then compare a human to a Neanderthal side by side. When the bones of Neanderthals were first found, they were confused to be a cave bear’s bones but when shown to schoolteacher/ fossilist Johann Carl Fuhlrott they were then seen as traces of a primitive ancestor. The neanderthal was first thought of as hunched over, hairy, and brutish. After World War 2, the bones were examined and finally scientists found out that they looked a lot like modern humans, “ Indeed, given a shave and a nice suit, (...) a Neanderthal probably would attract no more attention on a New York subway ‘than some of its other denizens” ( pg 243). A popular theory is called “ Out Of Africa”, the theory suggests that humans came from a small population in Africa. A problem with this theory is that some people’s DNA is more similar to Neaderthals than other people. Another hypothesis is the “ leaky replacement” theory, which states that before humans took over Neanderthals they actually had sex with them. Furthermore, the fact that some people have Neanderthal DNA shows that the children that were half-human and half-Neanderthal were taken care of rather than killed.  Neanderthals were a lot like us, they cared for each other just like humans do but there had to be something different between us. Pääbo wanted to find out the difference between humans a Neaderthals and began to experiment with the “madness gene”, he says, “ If we one day will know that some freak mutation made human insanity and exploration thing possible, it would be amazing to think that it was this little inversion on this chromosome that made all this happened and changed the whole ecosystem of the planet and made us dominate everything” ( pg 251-252). Although humans have survived all these years, our madness, the very thing that kept us humans alive, will also lead to our downfall.