Chapter 12 of the Sixth Extinction, The Madness Gene, dealt with the various theories that have developed overtime to explain the Neanderthals themselves and also why they disappeared so suddenly. In a larger spectrum, Elizabeth Kolbert addresses the role that humans may have contributed in wiping out the closely related Neanderthals. Hence this chapter shows a bleak portrait of human nature, suggesting that humans are capable of destroying even beings that resemble themselves closely enough to breed with. In a both sad yet fascinating aspect, Kolbert explains that, “before humans finally did in the Neanderthals, they had sex with them. As a result of this interaction, most people today are slightly- up to four percent- Neanderthal” (238). The chapter begins by introducing paleogenetics, in which it is sometimes possible to examine prehistoric remains and find fragments of DNA. Using DNA samples, scientists like Pääbo can reconstruct what long-extinct creatures looked like, and their genome. Pääbo’s goal specifically is to sequence the entire Neanderthal genome, in order to lay out the human and Neanderthal genomes to find where they diverged.
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