Todd Moody wrote:
>

> Sure, it makes sense.  I don't know how to answer it, though.  It
> seems that Neanderthal and Cro Magnon (=us) had a common
> ancestor, which must have been at least a half million years ago,
> maybe more.  If a Neanderthal walked into a shopping mall, people
> would stare.

For the classic, european versian of the neanderthal, yes.
But I was recently reading a report about skeletons found in
the middle east which are more difficult to classify. Across
the range of the neanderthal they varied widely in body
shape and skull shape. Some were enough like cro-magnons of
the time to be arguably the same species, or possibly
hybrids. What little genetic evidence has survived 300000
years suggests the neanderthal were not related to us in the
recent past, 5000000 years or more. Hard to say. One
possibility is that these hybrid skeletons were true
neanderthal/cromagnon crosses, but that like the donkey and
horse crosses, were sterile, mules. This is one of those
endless arguments that different camps of paleontologists
like to fight about.