With the Mid-term elections of 2006 over, except for minimal recounts, we can go back to questioning if “humans”, like you and me, are all we think we are.  New studies of the DNA of early competing species, the Neanderthals, “suggest” that at least a few times thousands of years ago that the “human” gene pool had added to it material from mating between the two species with us “humans” coming out ahead while the Neanderthals disappeared from the scene.  Well, at least some individuals left markers that seem to account for the large brain sizes of some of us.

The question must be asked:  Why is this important?  Well, I don’t know and neither do the researchers but the itch for discovery of why some of us are different in subtle ways is always present in those who study themselves.  Was it Aristotle who said that the unexamined self was not worthy – or something like that?

Jane Auel has explained it in her series of books about Ayla, the survivor who lived to escape lion attacks, nurturing by Neanderthals and became an inventor, healer and questioner of the problem of the male contribution to produce children in women.  It was not the strong male spirit, she said, that was the cause of pregnancy but a more intimate joining of the two sexes. This is probably true as attested by the fact that Humans of today obviously inherited gene material from precursors at the dawn of Human pre-history. There was a lot of mating going on.

It is, perhaps, the lunacy in the just completed election process that shows humans not be so human, after all.  A great deal has been made about the Democrats having won the election and now have majorities in both houses of Congress.  But, what has been won?  Instead of a bare majority of Republicans working with a Republican President, we now have a bare majority of Democrats working against a Republican President and having to repair the damage done by the Republican drive to drive out Liberals in the Supreme Court.

Remnants of early pre or proto-human races have been discovered in the gene pool of us humans today.  Researchers have taken up the challenge to answer questions about why some differences are present in modern DNA.  The large brain size is one such marker. The “human” predilection to preying on different tribes who exist among us today might be explained by “primitive” Neanderthals who insinuated their “spirit” or “essence” into the Human race.  It might explain something and, then, again, it might explain nothing except for satisfying the need for us to questions: where we came from and why we do what we do?  The Neanderthals among us might wonder: “What went wrong?”