Have you read the October 9, 2006 Time article by Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman entitled "What Makes Us Different?" The issue's cover photo is a chimpanzee and a human baby beneath the headline, "How We Became Human: Chimps and humans share almost 99% of their DNA. New discoveries reveal how we can be so alike--and yet so different." You'd think they had it all figured out.
One-point-two-three percent of three billion base pairs represents 36.9 million differences between the chimp and human genome--hardly a "tiny" or "subtle" change, contrary to the gist of the Lemonick and Dorfman article. Using this logic, they would have to conclude that NASA's Space Shuttle is virtually identical to a paper airplane, as the Shuttle is comprised of a mere 2.5 million parts! The scientific data tells us that humans and chimps are very different genetically; it neither suggests that one could evolve into the other, nor does it offer any mechanism for such a drastic increase in genetic information. That suggestion, and the imaginary mechanism, are found not in the physical evidence, but in the imaginations of those who simply wish it were so.
Sadly, Lemonick and Dorfman taint solid DNA research with evolutionary fantasizing never demonstrated in a laboratory or in nature. Their basic rationale is that "most of us" don't really care about the very real medical benefits of this research; "most of us" are only interested in trying to use this data to somehow prove the theory of evolution. Count this reader as one whose primary interest is how the research can benefit mankind, right now, today. The meat of the research has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, and Lemonick and Dorfman do a disservice to the research by usurping it for their "all in the family" fantasizing (nice graphic, by the way--but where is the fossil evidence for those creatures that supposedly populate the trunk and base of the tree?).
The authors point out that the DNA molecule won't hold up for 38,000 years, then cast Pääbo as some sort of wonder-worker with his miraculous ability to extract 38,000-year-old DNA from Neanderthal bone. A more plausible explanation could be that Neanderthals aren't as old as everyone seems to want to believe they are. Intriguing too is the fact that, even after admitting that crucial genetic information resides in what was once thought to be "junk" DNA, Lemonick and Dorfman are so certain that "much of [the rest of the DNA] is, in fact, junk--the residue of evolutionary events long forgotten and no longer relevant." Given that no-one, to date, has been able to verify a random genetic mutation that both adds genetic information and improves an organism's viability--the bare minimum required for one species to evolve into another--it is interesting that such "evolutionary events" can be "long forgotten." We can't confirm even the merest possibility that they could have happened in the first place!
To give credit where due, Lemonick and Dorfman do admit that their fantasy "depends in part on the accuracy of fossil dating and the reliability of using genetic variation as a clock. Both methods currently carry big margins of error." They can say that again!