From the "duh" files

Another tidbit from Kiki's Science Hour (an excellent podcast you should all be listening to), this time with a science reporter.

Turns out the Neanderthal Genome has been mapped, at least in a rough draft, and it proves that Neanderthals and humans had sex- since up to 1.5% of their DNA entered the human genome.

This deserves a resounding "duh", at least in my opinion but confirmation is nice and apparently necessary.

See, it turns out anthropologists, at least some of them, need proof because they don't actually live in what we call the "real world".

When I was a Freshman at USF, I took an intro anthropology class, cause that's the kind of stuff Freshmen take, and in that class, the professor uttered one of the best sentences of all time:

Neanderthals and humans never had sex, and they never made war.

This elicited one of the biggest laughs from me, purely spontaneous, just assuming my professor had to be joking. His look (and my grade) told me that no, he really meant this, and even though I never got anything better than a C- from the dumb jerk, it still makes me chuckle that someone actually said, and meant, those words.