” you’d need some new hominid closer to us in both time and form than the neanderthal and that creature, had he ever existed, would be very easy to find.
—Neandertals overlapped with homo sapiens the entire time they were here. And the fossils are easy to find - they are found throughout europe, africa, and asia.
Both Neandertals and Homo sapiens probably split from Homo heidelbergensis.
Neandertals were never really viewed as an ancestor of Homo sapiens, since Neandertals are no older than Homo sapiens. The question has been whether Neandertals and Homo sapiens interbred, and whether Neandertals should be viewed as fully Homo sapiens (which is what I’ve always seen Creationists argue - this is probably the first time I’ve seen otherwise), or whether they should be seen as a sub-species, or maybe even as an entirely separate species.
The neanderthal was too far from us for us to be descended from him and Heidelbergensis was further. DNA tests would show that; it seemingly hasn’t occurred to anybody that dna tests on Heidelbergensis materials would be possible.