There's no gene for being human
Barbara Molz found supposedly extinct ancient gene variants in hundreds of modern humans. They don't seem to do much.
What makes us human?
Personally, I think the answer is language.[1] Maybe you think it's being logical. Maybe you're Spock from Star Trek and think it's being illogical. But whatever ultimately makes our species special, it's reasonable to think that the difference that made all the difference must be recorded somewhere, somehow in our genome.
When scientists first got their hands on complete Neanderthal genomes about a decade ago, they identified several genes that appeared to have received a human-specific "update" sometime after our lineage split ways from that of our Neanderthal cousins. All living humans had the new version, Neanderthals had the old version. This was exciting. Might a one of those gene variants have unlocked human cognition? Scientists seriously wondered if there might be a single gene that could explain what makes us human.
Later, as we sequenced more and more human genomes, it turned out that some of those supposedly universal human gene changes aren't actually so universal. While rare, some people do carry the old versions. And they're definitely human.
So what's going on with those ancient variants? Did they actually play a deciding role in human evolution?
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