Michael Shermer » Our Neandertal Brethren

"I always suspected that Neandertals and anatomically modern humans interbred, based on a simple observation":

That being, of course, the existence of Gerard Depardieu.

This is actually a serious article from Scientific American, the essence of which is this: "Around 400,000 years ago a population of hominids migrated northward through the Middle East and into Europe and parts of western Asia. Between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago another population from the ancestral continent journeyed a similar route into the Eurasian landmass, and there the two populations met and mated. We are their descendants. The Neandertal species did not go extinct, because it was never a separate species; instead population pockets of Neandertals died out around 30,000 years ago, whereas other Neandertal populations survived through interbreeding with their modern human brothers and sisters, who live on to this day."