many people carry Neanderthal traces, he said. Two percent, four percent, this measure of ancient life was stunning, given that there have been no living communities of full Neanderthals actively contributing to the gene pool for forty thousand years. It’s as if our chromosomes cling to this old share, he said, as if it were a precious keepsake, an heirloom, the remnant of a person deep inside us who knew our world before the fall, before the collapse of humanity into a cruel society of classes and domination.
