Pots and pans – or something in between?

Things sometimes come into the head and stay there refusing to go away. A question has stayed with me for several weeks and now needs to be put to rest – one way or the other.

Anthropologists struggle to put sense on what or who we really are. The more recent inquiries raise the possibility that we are more broad church than we  might once have thought we were.

As part of this scientific inquiry John Hawks, an anthropologist, holds the view that modern humans, Denisovans and Neandertals might be collectively embraced within the definition of same species. Our genomes show traces of both Neandertals and Denisovans in their make up.

So the question that has held my attention these past few weeks is – if it can definitively be concluded that we three are indeed the same species – does that mean that both Neandertals and Denisovans had souls? And if so might we hope to meet them in the afterlife?

Theologians out there I need your help to put my mind at rest.