The sad truth is that it is possible to count on the fingers of two hands the examples like FOXP2 of mutations that increased in frequency in human ancestors under the pressure of natural selection and whose functions we partly understand. In each of these cases, the insights only came from years of hand-to-hand combat with life’s secrets by graduate students or postdoctoral scientists making engineered mice or fish, suggesting that it will take an evolutionary Manhattan Project to understand the function of each mutation that we have and that Neanderthals do not.
