SAN FRANCISCO – It’s a tale of romance from the Ice Age – and
its consequences today. Long ago, in a part of the world now
known as Europe, early modern humans lived alongside the
Neanderthal people – and they interbred. A fast-growing
population of humans eventually drove the Neanderthals to
extinction 30,000 years ago, but the benefits of those early
dalliances between the two groups live on. The researchers,
deciphering the genome of fossil Neanderthals and modern humans,
report they have found in both a major group of matching immune
system genes – genes the scientists say we inherited from our
stocky Ice Age predecessors. The same scientists also studied
the genes of a different ancient people, the Denisovans, who
were contemporary with the Neanderthals and whose meager fossils
were found in a Siberian cave called Denisova. The Denisovans,
the Stanford scientists said, were likely a “sister group to the
Neanderthals” who apparently bequeathed genes of their immune
systems to modern Melanesians – the peop