Pääbo redrew our family tree and permanently changed the way we think about who we are and how we got here. We learn that Neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our ancient relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of where language came from as well as why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct. Beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010, Neanderthal Man describes the events, intrigues, failures, and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient DNA. Neanderthal Man tells the riveting personal and scientific story of the quest to use ancient DNA to unlock the secrets of human evolution. He now identifies as bisexual and has two children with primatologist Linda Vigilant.A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes to answer the biggest question of them all: how did our ancestors become human? Of his own family, he says he “had always thought of myself as gay” before meeting the woman who would become his wife.

Paabo drew early inspiration from his Nobel laureate father, Sune Bergstrom, and in his memoir, recounts that he learned later in life of his father’s “double life”, that his existence had been kept a secret from his father’s other family. “I longed to bring a new rigor to the study of human history by investigating DNA sequence variation in ancient humans,” he wrote in his 2014 memoir ‘Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes’. He first went looking for DNA in mummies and older animals, like extinct cave bears and ground sloths, before he turned his attention to ancient humans. It took some three decades of research for Paabo to describe the Neanderthal genome. Those included gene variants that improved the ability to live at high altitudes and influenced how the immune system responded to infection. The ancestors of modern humans evolved in Africa before migrating to Europe and Asia, where they mixed with more ancient human forms and picked up genetic changes that strengthened their chances of survival in new environments.

Neanderthals lived across much of Europe until they disappeared about 30,000 years ago for reasons that remain the subject of intense debate. Paabo and his team also found genetic evidence that, during periods of coexistence, modern humans and Neanderthals had children together. The research helped establish that modern humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor that lived some 600,000 years ago.

Neanderthal man svante paabo