If Humans share DNA with Apes shouldn't Humans then share DNA with Neanderthals, considering?

@Frizby, I think you are finally getting it, though you are still a little bit confused.

Neanderthals are (were) our cousin species. We had a common ancestor with them about 500,000 years ago, just as we and the Neanderthals had a common early ape ancestor some 6 million years ago.

The results of the DNA analysis does not show that Neanderthals were not human. Of course they were "human," though not exactly the same as modern humans.

The study of Neanderthal DNA confirms that they diverged from the ancestors of modern human beings nearly 500,000 years ago (which, by the way, agrees with the fossil evidence) and that they have certain DNA sequences that are outside the range of modern humans.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/ab...

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40819/t...

It looks like a complete sequence of the Neanderthal genome will be available in the near future. It should resolve any lingering questions about their relationship to modern humans.

Added:

"Is it fair to say that according to evolution that Apes are more closely related to Humans than Humans are to Neanderthals?.."

Please read what I stated above. Modern humans are more closely related to Neanderthals than to the apes. Again, the line leading to modern humans and the line leading to the Neanderthals split about 500,000 years ago. The line leading to modern humans and Neanderthals and the line leading to the chimps split about 6 million years ago. If you add the modern gorillas to the ape line, then the split was about 8 million years ago.

Yes.

Apparently, Neanderthals and humans have a common ancestor. It is now thought that Neanderthals went down one path, that died out, while we evolved on a separate path, and so far, we have pulled through. Neanderthals are not our ancestors, but a parallel line.

Humans and chimpanzees have something like 98% the same DNA (which is not close enough to breed, but pretty close!). My guess is that Neanderthals would be even closer, but I do not know if anyone has sequenced and Neanderthal DNA yet.

<<If humans share 98% of the same DNA with Chimps, is it fair to say that humans share more DNA with Neanderthal?>> That would be so, because Neanderthals branched off from the main Homo genus, probably from Homo Erectus species, I don't remember what the estimate of when that happened would be, but was millions of years after the divergence of paths between hominids and apes. Homo Sapiens would appear to have developed off the Homo Erectus line with perhaps some big changes then gradual improvements - the Cromagnon early Homo Sapiens still have archaic features apparently. It's not very pc, but I think a lot of changes could effect the way we think, and that would be more significant than body form, so I think the Neanderthals were thick-in-the-head compared with us! Supposedly the geneticists think there was no interbreeding between early modern man and Neanderthals. I think Neanderthals only died out at the end of the last Ice Age, but don't remember.

We are related to both neanderthals and apes, but we don't DIRECTLY descend from either of them, so they are not the missing link. Think of them as very distant cousins, with Neanderthals being more closely related to us than apes.

That's a decent point. Some people think that cosmic rays have played a part in speeding up our evolution process by altering our DNA at certain pivotal points in human existence. This operates on more or less the same line as 'the monolith' from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A space odyssey. But apparently it's not so much a fiction as many would like to believe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNWlHbP-lo0

If one sees our family history as a tree, then humans are related to Neanderthals as two twigs from the same branch

Um...to my knowledge they technically are

It's just that no modern neanderthals exist; Modern apes do

Plus, we share DNA with every other living creature on Earth. It just depends to what degree

Almost choked on my banana

Are you saying my ancestors were Apes ? There are no photos of any in the Family Album

Our DNA is more similar to Neanderthal. The thing is there are marker that tell us we didn't interbreed.

Human DNA is also 50% identical to a banana.