"Comparisons with the DNA of modern humans and of apes showed the Neanderthal was about halfway between a modern human and a chimpanzee...."
We've sequenced about seven million bases so far. Based on analysis from the first million bases, Neandertals were like humans about 96 percent of the time [meaning: at the sites of the genome where modern humans and chimps differ, the Neandertal sequence was much more likely to resemble modern humans, while it was the same as the chimp only four percent of the time.]Neanderthal is classified in genus Homo, as are we. And, other than ourselves, Neanderthal is the next most modern and advanced species in that genus. No serious scientists classify Neanderthal anywhere near the apes.The parts we're really interested in are the four percent where Neandertals are like chimps rather than humans. We hope those genes will be those that confer higher executive function. Genes for talking, cognition, or brain development would be most exciting. We imagine that as people find new genes they suspect are unique to humans and are involved in higher-order cognition, we'll be able to compare to them the Neandertal genome and see if they are different. Source (emphasis added)
Didn't I correct you on some of these same points back in December?
Paabo’s study consisted of fewer than 400 base pairs (379 base pairs out of a presumed original number in excess of 16,000) but apparently those details are not of common knowledge, or at least not to the ignorant author of that Express India piece you linked. Try this one:
http://www.unl.edu/rhames/neander/neander.htm
“The single Neandertal DNA sequence is distinct from all those known for humans and chimps... they calculated that the sequence ancestral to both modern and Neandertal mitochondria began to diverge some 550,000 to 690,000 years ago...”