WASHINGTON: Human evolution has been moving at breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding along as some scientists had thought, researchers have said.

In fact, people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin.

The genetic changes have related to numerous different human characteristics, the researchers said.