WE HUMANS like to see ourselves as special, at the very pinnacle of all life. That makes us keen to keep a safe distance between ourselves and related species that threaten our sense of uniqueness. Unfortunately, the evidence can sometimes make that difficult.
Decades ago, when the primatologist Jane Goodall told anthropologist Louis Leakey that chimps used sticks to scoop up termites, he wrote: "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man or accept chimpanzees as human." The news this month that humans and Neanderthals interbred (see "Revealed: the cavemen that live on in all of us") presents us with a similar conundrum - only this one lies far closer to home. Must we now consider Neanderthals as one of our own, another twig on the branch called Homo sapiens?
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