Link and excerpt follows:
Neanderthal Code | National Geographic Channel
Then, in 2006, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany began working with a Connecticut company, 454 Life Sciences, on a project to map the Neanderthal genome, using DNA fragments extracted from Neanderthal remains. While that work is still in progress, one early finding from analysis of Neanderthal DNA suggests that it may well lead to yet another significant shift in our perception of Neanderthals. Researchers have discovered that Neanderthals had exactly the same version of the FoxP2 gene, which is associated with the use of language, as modern humans — a similarity that would be difficult to explain if the two groups evolved separately. The discovery also raises the possibility that modern humans acquired the language gene by interbreeding with Neanderthals. If that proves to be true, it would mean that Neanderthals not only were our long-ago relatives, but contributed an important part of what it means to be human.
