RAZIB KHAN: Homo with a side of sapiens: the brainy silent partner we co-opted 300,000 years ago. “A plain reading of this result is that modern humans are a synthetic population, and our functions and features are a melange. Most of our biological processes derive from the same lineage that gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans. But, a minority of our heritage is a holdover from some very different and alien population that was notably distinct from the Eurasian hominins likely demographically dominant within Africa (population A). That exotic population, labeled B here, seems to have bequeathed our lineage much more of its cognitive function, and perhaps crucially earned us our self-chosen sobriquet Homo sapiens.”