Learning about our distant past isn't all about digging in the dirt.

What really drives our work is really curiosity, I would say.

It is just as if you do an archaeological excavation to find out about the past

we sort of make excavations in the human genome. It's Thursday July 11th. It's also Science Friday.

I'm John Dankowski, and that was the voice of Nobel Laureate Savante Pablo.

Back in 1997 on this very date, his team was the first to sequence

DNA extracted from a Neanderthal specimen. It was research they published in the journal

Cell. My biggest interest is actually to study the genetic differences

between present-day people and our closest relatives

and the undertoss, particularly genetic changes that exist in everybody today or almost everybody.

And then that may be important for why modern humans became so numerous foreign big societies and so on.

That research led to some really remarkable findings like that there are billions of people

who carry some percentage of Neanderthal DNA.

This work has spun off more research that traces Neanderthal

genes into our neural processes and immune system and in this archival interview

from last November we also learned that Neanderthal genes might even affect how we feel pain.

Here's Ira Flato.

There's a little bit of Neanderthal in most of us.

The Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had a long history of intermingling until the former went extinct about 40,000 years ago.

That mixing has led to some modern people having up to 3% of Neanderthal DNA.

And while these genetic remnants don't have a lot of impact on our day-to-day life,

it may have one surprising effect, pain tolerance.

...