Come back Neanderthal all is forgiven

The news that Neanderthal man interbred with modern humans should now put the final nail in the coffin of racism. Ever since our Neanderthal cousin was discovered in Germany in 1856 there has been heated debate about whether he was the same species as modern humans or not. Initially, he was classified as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, but latterly he was placed into another species of his own; Homo Neanderthalensis. Our cousin was portrayed as a crude and aggressive half ape, half man creature until well into the 20th century. But more recent evidence suggests that he was much more human than previously considered. Our cousin died out in Spain about 28,000 years ago. Some palaeoanthropologists believe that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans and now it looks as if there is proof that this did in fact happen. Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany has discovered that the genome of modern humans contains between 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. Further studies suggest that the genome of modern man is 97.7 percent similar to the DNA of our cousin.

But what has this got to do with racism? We humans are obsessed with classifying nature. We are constantly trying to assert that there are major differences between closely related animal and plant species. For instance, the dog and the wolf freely interbreed with one another and the domestic dog descended from the wolf, so nature regards them as the same species but humans classify them as separate. Unfortunately, we have tried to do the same with human beings and we have falsely asserted that there are substantial differences between human populations where none exists. And from that assertion we have assumed racial differences that do not really exist and have supplied "oxygen" to the false assertions of racists. Modern human beings are almost clones of one another and there is no substantial difference between a person originating from China and a person originating from India or anywhere else.

Jonathan Marks in his excellent book "What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee" put forward the point of view that Neanderthals and Modern human beings should be referred to as sub-species of Homo Sapiens. The Neanderthals (Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis ) died out to leave just one sub-species , Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or us. The latest evidence vindicates this point of view. The last surviving humans are all in the same group. There is no scientific basis for racism which should now be defeated once and for all.

The new findings also put modern humans, firmly, in their rightful place within nature: we have believed that we were somehow superior to our Neanderthal cousins, but we are not. They were our equals and they were sufficiently human to interbreed with us. No modern human group, therefore, is superior in nature to another and racism is a dangerous and unnecessary contrivance.