Neanderthal Man: In Search Of Lost Genomes, Paabo - B-

                                               I suspect most of us are at least curious, about our connection to our Neanderthal ancestors. As a client of 23andme.com, I am told that 2.9% of my DNA is Neanderthal. This book tells the story of how the science of DNA sequencing has evolved over the last two decades to the point that someone can state to the tenth of a point a person's genetic composition. Heretofore, scientists have been limited to studying fossils and, quite frankly, guessing what the heck has happened over the millennia.  The author, a Swede, trained in many places and settled in Germany, has been part of the process of studying DNA extracted from ancient bones. His curiosity began with mummies from Egypt, and moved on eventually to Neanderthal bones. Although the first bones found and identified as our 'cousins' were in the Neander Valley in Germany, the largest cache of Neanderthal bones are found in Croatia.  The author can write, and write well. However, I do not think that the greatest writers of all time could make pyrosequencing or DNA cloning very interesting to me. So, about half way through and overwhelmed by the science, I started skipping forward.  After processing billions of nucleotides,  the conclusion was drawn that almost all humans today have Neanderthal DNA. How that DNA was shared between two different species remains an item of scientific speculation. That conclusion shattered  many of the archaeological theses about human evolution.  I've always been intrigued by this topic and have read many of the older books about 'Lucy' and the battles between the Leakeys and the 'out of Africa' controversies v. multi-origin theorists. As more and more has been written about what the chemist's are doing, the conclusion I have come to is that the teams in the chemistry labs will be the ones who learn all about our past. That said, I think I'll limit my inquisitiveness to newspapers and magazines.