Modern-Day Neanderthal

Advances in contemporary genetic science have reshaped the narratives whereby individuals and communities make sense of their personal, family, communal histories. In this process, unknown connections been revealed familiar orthodoxies disrupted. This essay examines consequences a particularly unusual revelation—the dawning awareness presence nonhuman archaic human DNA lines—for efforts at writing about identity society. autoethnographic account, I examine my own inheritance Neanderthal DNA, posit performative concept life that begins to unpack complexities new knowledge our condition. Rather than providing key unlocking an “essential” humanity, murky, messy, multispecies genome reveals essentially ecological quality individual identities.