Turns out, there’s a little Neanderthal in all of us.

• In 2010, Svante Pääbo and his colleagues unveiled the Neanderthal genome.

• Pääbo is a biologist and evolutionary anthropologist. He is also the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

• His research shows that Humans and Neanderthals interbred in the prehistoric past.

• Thus Neanderthal DNA makes up 1% to 2% of the genome of many modern humans…

• …Except Africans, who have no Neanderthal contribution. (Watch the video to learn why).

• Our Neanderthal relatives became extinct 30,000 years ago. See what other extinct forms of humans there are.

What makes humans human? Find out:

Watch A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins with Svante Pääbo.