injuries, which means that Neanderthals must have watched out for one
another, which, in turn, implies a capacity for empathy. From the
archaeological record, it’s inferred that Neanderthals evolved in Europe
or in western Asia and dispersed from there, stopping when they reached
water or some other significant obstacle. (During the last glaciation, when
sea levels were so much lower than they are now, there was no English
Channel to contend with.) This is one of the most basic ways modern
humans differ from Neanderthals, and, in Pääbo’s view, it’s also one of the
most intriguing. When modern humans journeyed to Australia, even
though it was the middle of an ice age, there was no way to make the trip
without crossing open water.
Archaic humans like Homo erectus “spread like many other mammals
in the Old World,” Pääbo told me. “They never came to Madagascar, never
to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It’s only fully modern humans who
start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land.
Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But
there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How
many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you
found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it
for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We
never stop.”
The same stretch of chromosome 5 from the human, Neanderthal, and chimp genomes.
If Faustian restlessness is one of the defining characteristics of
modern humans, then, by Pääbo’s account, there must be some sort of
Faustian gene. Several times, he told me that he thought it should be