Could Our Big Brains Come from Neanderthals?

Neanderthals may have given the modern humans who replaced them a priceless gift — a gene that helped them develop superior brains. And the only way they could have provided that gift would have been by interbreeding. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides indirect evidence that modern Homo sapiens and so-called Neanderthals interbred at some point when they lived side by side in Europe