It also made it clear that they were probably still around and well mixed into the European peoples.
Red/Yellow pigment is still rare among East Asians, and although they have lighter skin tones than more Tropical peoples, it's through an entirely different set of changes than those of the Europeans
All things considered it's entirely possible that the Europeans have more Neanderthal background than they do recent African background.
This would divide humanity into two current major strains ~ Africans, and Neanderthals, with blends existing elsewhere, e.g. in Eastasia.
This is not an original idea ~ more or less the way paleontologists were looking at things up to as recently as 1970.
“When they found that Neanderthals had the same gene sequence necessary to produce red hair, light skin tone and blue eyes, that pretty well knocked aside the whole idea that they weren’t as fully human as anyone else.”
That does help explain the Scotts.