Dispute Over Classification Of New Species Of Prehistoric 'Human'

Actually, all of the earliest known primates fossils are from Asia, not Africa.

A lemur is a primate. A tarsier is a primate. An aye-aye is a primate. A colugo is a primate. None of the aforementioned are hominds, apes, or even monkeys. You are the first person to bring up the origin of primates. Have a ball with it.

And there's also the matter of the genetic debris from a baboon virus which is found in African primate DNA, but not in human DNA, meaning that living humans' ancestors were not in Africa where they could contract it.

Or it could just mean that a baboon ancestor caught a virus after baboons diverged from other groups. I'm not sure what you're talking about or what it means, but I do get the feeling that, whatever it is, you're not the best one to explain it to me.

At least none of the Y-chromosomes found in living men can be traced back to Neanderthal males, and none of the mitochondrial DNA goes back to Neanderthal women...whether there is still some way some Neanderthal genetic material could be present that hasn't been detected yet, I don't know enough about genetics to say.

How do we know what "Neanderthal" genes are? Do we know the signature of Neanderthal DNA? I don't think so. So....until we know THAT, it might, or might not, be assumed that some DNA remnants remain.

I would think, logically I hope, that there would be some DNA remnants from any one of our hominid anscentors...at least, the most successful DNA-genes.

SOMEthing successful in our ancestral gene pool led us onward to homo sapiens.

There isn't any way to determine whether any DNA is shared with Neandertal, other than morphology, which shows a relationship. There's a much-trumpeted "study" which (based on fewer than 400 base pairs of mtDNA, from a presumed original 16,000+ base pairs, from Homo Heidelbergensis) claimed that Neandertal was too different. There's no basis for that conclusion, the conclusion fit the original assumptions.

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No nuclear DNA (X, Y, or any other chromosome) has been recovered from Neanderthal fossils. We have some mtDNA which seems consistent across two or more samples but which is unknown in modern humans. That is, it looks like they had different mtDNA than any of us do now. It's easier to recover some good mtDNA from a fossil because there are often a thousand or more mitochondria in a cell but only one nucleus. There are simply more chances. Nuclear DNA would be nice but it may never happen.

Because mtDNA is matrilineal, it would be quite possible if some limited interbreeding happened once that some nuclear Neanderthal genes entered the human pool and are still around and yet the mtDNA lines dead-ended. You have to have an unbroken line of female descent to keep the mtDNA going.

Take some lone Neanderthal woman, the last of her tribe, adopted in some Homo sapiens village long ago. She has three sons and three daughters. Only the daughters carry her Neanderthal mtDNA. Only their own daughters will carry it, and their daughters, etc. Male descents and female descendants alike can spread Neanderthal nuclear genes, but only female descendants from an unbroken line going back to the original Ugly Mama carry the mtDNA. The mtDNA line is thus very vulnerable to extinction if the original seeding into the human population is limited.

The evidence for interbreeding is thus weak overall. There's no positive genetic evidence and may never be any. There are a few controversial fossils with confusingly intermediate features. They may or may not show hybridism. If hybrids ever existed, we may or may not still have some of their genes. New finds would be helpful. Nuclear DNA from Neanderthals would be especially helpful.

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