Not our relatives

Big Frank has been reading a little bit lately on some research being conducted on Neanderthals. As you all probably know - these bug lunks disappeared from the face of the earth, went extinct, around 30,000 years ago. There has always been speculation about the relationship is any between the Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. They did exist at the same time for thousands of years. However, we know practically nothing about what if any contact they had with each other, whether they got along, interbred, kept their distance from each other, fought, or what. Svante Paabo is investigating this through an analysis of Neanderthal DNA. He has bones from three Neanderthal fossils and has extracted some DNA from each. His initial findings are that there was probably no interbreeding between the two groups. His studies indicate that Neanderthasl contributed little, if any, DNA to modern humans. Big Frank doesn't know about the rest of you, but he is very pleased to know that his ancestors were not Neanderthals.