One of the abiding questions in human evolution is the intimacy of the relationship between early people and their clear, near relations, the Neanderthals. At one time, it was hoped that a genetic study of ancient DNA would tell us definitely whether a Neanderthal was our uncle 10,000 times removed, but a recent analysis of the remains of the two species have demonstrated just how difficult that is, and may always be.When DNA taken from the bones of early humans was compared with DNA taken from Neanderthals who lived in roughly the same time period, no trace of Neanderthal genetic material was found sloshing about in any early Homo sapiens. On its face, this would suggest that the promiscuous mating some anthropologists have argued characterized early human and Neanderthal interaction never happened."There is no evidence to date that Neanderthals contributed to our current gene pool," says Svante Paabo, a geneticist with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany and co-author of the study, which appeared in the Internet journal PLoS Biology.This is in sharp distinction to the views of University of Michigan anthropologist Milford Wolpoff, who has argued that "so-called modern humans are a 50-50 combination of ancestry from both peoples," and to the position of University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, who several years ago suggested the bones of a 25,000-year-old fossil of a boy found in Portugal indicated he was of mixed human and Neanderthal origin.

But this is less a contradiction than you might think.Despite a paper entitled "No Neanderthal DNA contribution to early modern humans," the European scientists say there is also a highly negative way to interpret their data. "With our current DNA analysis techniques, we won't be able to resolve this issue and there is nothing we can do about that today," Prof. Paabo says.

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This article reminded me of the theory that was doing the rounds a little while back that the 'ginger' gene was originally Neanderthal. It did a bit of research and it looks like that is a miss quote by newspapers at the time and in actual fact the gene only dates back to that time and there is currently no proof tell if it came from them or not. That article is here, but this dates back almost thre years - anyone know if they've proved it either way since?

well maybe they really are yeti or bigfood and still live today.In that case we could ask them as soon as we catch one.

Some anthropologists believe Grendel from Beowulf was from a group of Neanderthals that survived the Ice Age. This would account for his amazing strength and human characteristics.

i hadn't thought of that - thanks for that point dezavala. I'm a great believer that myths and legends could be based on actual events, and and are added to over the generations, and that particular point makes an interesting theory.