I liked this article in the LA Times just as much as Bob(of the famous Bob's Blog) did, but for a different reason. Here's my favorite quote:
"We can now say with absolute certainty that we've got these Neanderthal genes," said John Hawks, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study. "They're not 'them' anymore; they're 'us.'"
They took DNA samples from Neanderthals and found that they are 99.7% identical to those of modern humans. In fact, they found that these gene structures are in people all over the world. Now here's where it gets fun. They then "conclude" that some connection between people groups exist, that the Neanderthal met with Homo Sapiens somewhere between Europe and Asia, namely the Middle East and "swapped DNA," so to speak.
I'll say what they are afraid to. Biblical sources and all historical claims up to the modern era have claimed that mankind began in the region of the Middle East. Without all that "Evolutionary" education in the way they can't see the forest for the trees. The truth is that "they" are "us." They say over and over that the DNA samples were not very good, but I would bet that if there were a similar story for a bird or an iguana, this would be a story about just ancient birds and iguanas. In other words, if you're human, and you can swap DNA with another creature, the obvious, clear, Ockham's Razor kind of answer is that that other creature is also human!
The Wall Street Journal also has a story about the Neanderthal genome project. That article had two main points of emphasis: the gfact that most of the Neanderthal genome has now been mapped, and the fact that the researchers believe that up to 4 percent of the human genome is "accounted for by the Neanderthal legacy."
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