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Though hominins were present in Eurasia well before 1 million years ago, the oldest H. sapiens fossils are certainly African.
During the crucial period between 800 and 600 ka, when the ancestors of Denisovans and Neanderthals split off from what would become ‘us’,
The oldest H. sapiens skulls, pretty much like extant humans, date to around 200 to 150 ka in East Africa, around the same time that ‘classic’ Neanderthal anatomy was also coalescing.
H. sapiens were already many thousands of kilometres into East Asia probably before 100 ka,
Current data finds between 1.8 and 2.6 per cent Neanderthal DNA in everyone except those of sub-Saharan heritage;
interbreeding was effectively the norm from way back.
The contact phase that apparently left the largest genetic mark in us took place between 75 and 55 ka.
the interbreeding with the source population that had the most impact on us happened in a region for which we’ve yet to get any Neanderthal DNA.
We can refine this archaeologically to before 55 to 60 ka, since today’s Aboriginal people carry Neanderthal genes and were already in Australia by then.
42 and 37 ka.
he had a Neanderthal ancestor within just four to six generations.
Taken together, there are at least three and potentially six periods since 200 ka when Neanderthals made babies with us.
No late Neanderthals, even those from Vindija who are geographically close and only slightly older than the Oase man, show any genetic input from H. sapiens.
hints in the DNA that couplings might have involved more Neanderthal men with H. sapiens women than the reverse,
perhaps as much as half – of the great twisting genetic recipe making Neanderthals ‘Neanderthal’ endures today.
no late Neanderthal genomes show any H. sapiens input.
not all late Neanderthal populations were shrinking,
so far we’ve sampled fewer than 40 Neanderthals – and have only 3 high-coverage genomes
the ‘end’ of the Neanderthals was a process involving bodily and probably cultural assimilation.
highest resolution for individual radiocarbon measurements is around 500 to 2,000 years, far
Layers containing their distinctive techno-complexes also disappear between 45 and 40 ka.
secure evidence for genuinely hybrid cultures associated with Neanderthals is very thin indeed.
There wasn’t wholesale merging of populations, or of cultures. No Neanderthals across their whole
range during the crucial period between 80 and 40 ka have any genetic hints of hybridising, and not all early H. sapiens individuals show it either:
Though Neanderthals remained physically distinct even in their last visible skeletal remains, the scale and repetition of interbreeding, plus the range of retained genes in us, means they were – and are – human.
Chimpanzees and bonobos, who are both physically and socially quite different, have only been separated since around 850 ka; roughly the same time that our own ancestors separated from the lineage that would lead to Neanderthals and Denisovans.
allotaxa
closely related species that vary in bodies and behaviours, yet...
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sapiens. We are prone to paint ourselves as victors, but outside Africa we nearly went extinct at least once, and suffered a major population crash around 70 ka, just before the majority of interbreeding with Neanderthals.
Upper Palaeolithic populations totally replaced each other, and were then replaced in their turn by later prehistoric cultures.
many of the first H. sapiens populations are more extinct than the Neanderthals;
Linnaeus was literally looking in the mirror when in 1758 he first named H. sapiens, regarding himself as the type specimen.
the species marked don’t match the main food sources:
there is no obvious or simple answer for
why we are here and not them
Neanderthals and early H. sapiens in Europe shared a distinct hominin niche, far more similar to each other than to furred predators.
While hunter-gatherers can successfully adapt to extremes, instability can be catastrophic.
sometimes plunging from not too bad to truly bitter within a lifetime.
Finishing this book in the late spring of 2020, it’s impossible not to wonder if a terrible contagion might have
been added into the mix, jumping from us to them.
the wider population had been slowly withering for hundreds of thousands of years.
Climate meltdown, plus a much more crowded continent, could have provided the stage for our persistence and the passing of the Neanderthals.
Extinction is frightening; even the syllables slam up against each other.
there are now multiple projects building Neander-oids: small clumps of gene-edited human brain cells.
the massive release of CO2 – outstripping anything from the entire Pleistocene and beyond – has delayed the next ice age indefinitely.
What’s happening is unprecedented. Over the next millennium – roughly 30 generations – we are heading into a world hotter and more dangerous than any previous hominin survived.
We might console ourselves with the knowledge that Neanderthals survived
Jean Auel.
in many ways her depiction of Neanderthals was prescient.
