Those Geico (and now ABC) cavemen might not be as fictional as you’d think (well, okay, the tennis playing and working on a thesis, maybe). I’m talking about talking.

Language is supposed to be the trait that distinguishes modern humans both from other animals and from our grunting ancestors. But a new study, published online today in Current Biology, suggests that while we might be special, we might not be unique. Contrary to the claim that the only gene known to play a role in speech and language arose in its current form some 20,000 years ago—long after modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals diverged evolutionarily—it looks like Neanderthals had this FOXP2 gene. That raises the possibility that Neanderthals possessed some of the biological machinery necessary for language.

“From the point of view of this gene, there is no reason to think that Neanderthals would not have had the ability for language,” said Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But since FOXP2 is not the only gene that underlies the capacity for language, Neanderthals would presumably have needed them, too, in order to have the gift of gab.

For the new study, Krause and his colleagues extracted DNA from Neanderthal fossils found in a cave in northern Spain, one of the species’ last redoubts before going extinct. They then identified and sequenced the Neanderthal FOXP2 gene. It was identical to the version found in modern humans.

Other studies of Neanderthal genes have turned out to be flawed due to contamination (what was thought to be an ancient gene actually came from DNA lying around the lab, as in sloughed-off skin cells). The scientists say they have taken pains to make sure this didn’t happen, including by sequencing parts of the Neanderthal Y chromosome, which was found to be different from the version in today’s men.

The finding, say the researchers, “establishes that these changes [in FOXP2 that distinguish it from the chimp version and, thus, presumably help confer the capacity for speech and language] were present in the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals.” Our lineage might have been a much chattier past than anyone suspected.

James Watson has made a career out of being the enfant terrible of molecular biology, but a 79-year-old enfant is just downright icky. In the past, as I noted in a recent story, Watson has endorsed aborting fetuses if they are known to carry a gene for homosexuality, encouraged genetic engineering so we can "make all girls pretty," and posited that having a darker skin makes you more libidinous.

Now he has ventured into even stupider waters, telling The Sunday Times of London that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours–whereas all the testing says not really." Although people of good will might hope that all humans are equal in intellectual potential, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

Watson is in London to promote his latest book, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science," with a sold-out speech scheduled for the Science Museum tomorrow. Last night the Museum canceled the appearance after Watson's remarks, but merely skimming the book would have given them advance warning of what Watson is thinking these days. He writes, “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

We have been this way before. In 1990, Science magazine noted that "To many in the scientific community, Watson has long been something of a wild man, and his colleagues tend to hold their collective breath whenever he veers from the script.” Now colleagues are, predictably, condemning his remarks, with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York putting out a statement saying the board and faculty "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments.''

Watson, of course, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for discovering, with the late Francis Crick, the double-helix structure of DNA, the master molecule of heredity. In his chronicle of that achievement, "The Double Helix," Watson cast himself as the swashbuckling genius fighting his way to the top, climbing over anyone who got in his way (including Rosalind Franklin, who took the x-ray images that formed the basis for Watson and Crick's inference about DNA's structure but whom Watson and Crick failed to credit at the time).

Sure, a mouse can smell a cat, and a vervet monkey can smell an approaching leopard, and lots of animals can smell the most dangerous hunter of all—man. But here’s a new one: elephants that can tell members of one African tribe from another by smell.

It’s a useful skill. In the Amboseli region of Kenya, the cattle-herding Maasai warriors show off their virility by spearing elephants (not fatally, in many cases), while the agricultural Kamba leave the elephants alone. Telling Maasai from Kamba seems like a good way to avoid danger, if you're an elephant, so scientists tested 18 groups of pachyderms in Amboseli to see what they were capable of.

In the experiment, being reported today online in the journal Current Biology, the scientists left out three kinds of garments: cloths that had been worn for five days by an adult Masai man, cloths that had been worn for five days by a Kamba man, and clean unworn cloths. Then they measured how the elephants reacted--how long they froze after catching the scent of the garment (it was obvious when an elephant smelled the cloth: he paused, raised his head, and curled his trunk upward in the direction of the scent), how fast they ran way in the first minute of flight, how far away they moved in the first five minutes, and how long it took them to relax.

“We expected that elephants might be able to distinguish among different human groups according to the level of risk that each presents to them, and we were not disappointed,” said Richard Byrne of the University of St. Andrews, who led the study.

The scent of a garment worn by a Maasai man made the elephants flee twice as fast as when they smelled never-worn clothing or clothing worn by a Kamba man. They traveled some four times as far. They also took twice as long to relax. The Maasai cloths also made the elephants flee to taller grass than the Kamba cloths did. The elephants were reacting to smell alone, since the cloths were never closer than 30 feet to them too far to see. “Elephants can classify members of a potential predator species into subgroups based on [smell] alone,” conclude the scientists.

The basis for the difference in smell is probably the different diets of the Kamba and Maasai. The latter, since they raise cattle, consume significant amounts of milk, cattle blood and meat, while the Kamba diet is mostly maize, vegetables and meat, differences that can translate into different body odors. Also, the scent of cattle permeates Maasai villages, and the warriors smear themselves with sheep fat and ochre as decoration.

Curiously, whether or not an elephant group had ever had a member speared by a Maasai warrior had virtually no effect on its reaction to the Maasai odor. The groups’ reactions “did not differ with their spearing history,” write the scientists. “Reactions were strong, even in groups with the least experience of spearing.” That suggests a remarkable learning curve, as one group of elephants with experience of bloody encounters with the Maasai somehow conveys to elephants with no such history that a particular smell means trouble.