made their way to a region where Neanderthals were living, the
Neanderthals in that region disappeared. Perhaps the Neanderthals were
actively pursued, or perhaps they were just outcompeted. Either way,
their decline fits the familiar pattern, with one important (and unsettling)
difference. Before humans finally did in the Neanderthals, they had sex
with them. As a result of this interaction, most people alive today are
slightly—up to four percent—Neanderthal. A T-shirt available for sale
near the Morphing Station puts the most upbeat spin possible on this
inheritance. ICH BIN STOLZ, EIN NEANDERTHALER ZU SEIN, it declares in block capital
letters. (“I am proud to be a Neanderthal.”) I liked the T-shirt so much I
bought one for my husband, though recently I realized that I’ve very
rarely seen him wear it.
THE Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is situated
almost three hundred miles due east of the Neander Valley, in the city of
Leipzig. The institute occupies a spanking new building shaped a bit like a
banana, and it stands out conspicuously in a neighborhood that still bears
the stamp of the city’s East German past. Just to the north is a block of
Soviet-style apartment buildings. To the south stands a huge hall with a
golden steeple, which used to be known as the Soviet Pavilion (and which
is now empty). In the lobby of the institute there’s a cafeteria and an
exhibit on great apes. A TV in the cafeteria plays a live feed of the
orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo.
Svante Pääbo heads the institute’s department of evolutionary
genetics. He is tall and lanky, with a long face, a narrow chin, and bushy
eyebrows, which he often raises to emphasize some sort of irony. Pääbo’s
office is dominated by two figures. One of these is of Pääbo himself—a
larger-than-life-size portrait that his graduate students presented to him
on his fiftieth birthday. (Each student painted a piece of the portrait, the
overall effect of which is a surprisingly good likeness, but in mismatched
colors that make it look as if he has a skin disease.) The other figure is a
Neanderthal—a life-size model skeleton, propped up so that its feet dangle