If you’re Asian or Caucasian, your ancestors interbred with Neanderthals as recently as 37,000 years ago, when they crossed paths in Europe.
Inherited Neanderthal genes come in alleles that help fight off nasty viruses such as Epstein-Barr — associated with several kinds of cancer, says Stanford University immunologist Laurent Abi-Rached.
If you want to know how much Neanderthal DNA you carry, just swab your cheek and send it to the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project.
Or you could have your entire genome sequenced as Ozzy Osbourne did in 2010.
It could even be beneficial, he believes, because the Neanderthal mind might be able to solve problems we can’t.
Practically nobody believed you could read a Neanderthal’s genes until 2010, when the paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo successfully sequenced DNA from three Neanderthal skeletons found in Croatia.
In any case, we lost our chance at conversation, since they died out some 25,000 years ago. »
