Day 300 - Neanderthal Story

Neanderthal Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Two point five percent. It seemed like such a small number. It seemed perfectly logical to try and do better. To maximize potential. To make things better.

Two point five percent. They had been bigger. Stronger. More adaptable. Biologically prepared. They were survivors that didn’t survive. Certainly that could be corrected.

Two point five percent. Give or take a little. But as an average it worked. Two point five percent was what remained. The Neanderthal was gone, but not forgotten. The Neanderthal still walks free today. They are everywhere – around us, beside us, inside us. Most people had no idea what they possessed inside. They all still had Neanderthal DNA – somewhere around two point five percent. It’s an average, a reminder of just how close at hand history still stands. Gone but not forgotten.

Why had Homo sapiens survived and the Neanderthals died off? Testing suggested that human and Neanderthal DNA were nearly identical – ninety-nine point five percent or greater. So close, and yet so far. They co-existed, cohabitated, and yet the Neanderthal was gone. Homo sapiens survived, for any number or reasons, and that was seemingly all that mattered.

In truth it’s never that simple. Two point five is so very little and yet it’s an incredible amount. The human genome had been mapped out, so they went to work on the Neanderthal’s.

The quest was to make a better person. The question was how. They looked for the answer in the DNA. They wondered what could be increased or decreased or changed or spliced or removed altogether. They were looking for the magic number, the perfect balance. They were trying to make things better. What they ended up with was entirely different.

The urges were dirty urges. The desires of the flesh. The desires for blood. The beast inside. The animal. Just waiting to GET OUT and run wild. It begged to be free. It fought to be free. The beast was coming, and there was no stopping it.

They wanted to make things better. What they made were monsters. They didn’t mean to. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t control it. They couldn’t master it. They unleashed in into an unsuspecting world. What never should have been suddenly was, and the blood and destruction that would follow was all that mattered now.