The Neanderthal from Braidwood

“Hey Thomas! You have more Neanderthal DNA than 77% of other customers.”

23andme.com

With this greeting, I opened my 23andme.com portal to see what this means. 

I knew that the Neanderthals disappeared about 40,000 years ago but not before they made close friends with my modern homo sapiens who had migrated north from Africa. Neanderthal origins started somewhere in the Middle East or Europe, not in Africa. Researchers tell us that while other branches of humans roamed the earth, only the modern humans and Neanderthals proved to have had long term viability. 

The web site went on to report that among my 1.503 relatives I rank in the top three for having Neanderthal DNA. This new information prompted me to conduct a little more research on the topic. Some of the Neanderthal traits might include:

• sun burned more easily (true)
• sense of direction not top notch (?)
• sweat more after workouts (maybe)
• blush less easily (not true)
• less likely to fear heights (true

The complete breakdown information stated that only 2% of my DNA is Neanderthal. The rest of it could have been anticipated:

• British and Irish 51%
• French and German 41%
• broadly Northwestern European 4.5%
• Scandinavian 2.5%
• Eastern European 1%

Scandinavian at 2.5% might indicate that the rumor about my missing great grandfather (Swedish?) is true. 

This new information also prompted me to reflect on how we, as Americans, view ourselves. Do we continue to see some fellow human as being from another race? It wasn’t that long ago that folks protested when nationalities became mixed. Croatian marrying a Slovenian? Irish and German? Kenyan and Spanish? Chinese and Korean? Nigerian and Arab? Light skin and dark skin? Protestant and Catholic?

My grandkids’ generation is far less likely to be concerned about different nationalities, religions, and skin pigment. Blended families abound even now. My generation and previous generations were much more critical about light skins marrying dark skins and nationality differences.

We seem to want to divide ourselves despite the fact that there are very few differences among us. Somehow, we think that the purity of one or the other might become “contaminated” and that mine is better, smarter, more virtuous than any other. 

Well just imagine how it was when the first modern humans moved north into Europe and mingled with a few Neanderthals. I could see the modern human mother telling her son to “…stop seeing that Neanderthal girl. She’s nothing but trouble. And they don’t even cook their mammoth meat most of the time.”

Well, that didn’t work. And it was soon after that (a couple thousand years later) the modern humans overran and eliminated the Neanderthal population. There goes the northern hemisphere’s neighborhood. 

Meanwhile…

I am confident that my friends and relatives will not think less of me for being more Neanderthal than others. Really, the “N” word amounts to very little in my DNA. And please be reassured that my diet is quite normal. (Except for raw meat on rare occasions.)