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Posted on 04/22/2026 10:44:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
We’ve discussed many times the fact that humans and Neanderthals are so similar that Neanderthals provide no evidence we are closely related to some type of primitive non-human hominid. Now, a new pre-publication paper reviewed by New Scientist provides more evidence for this, proposing the radical hypothesis that Neanderthals are not only closely related to humans — they are descended from us!
Michael Marshall asks, “Are Neanderthals descendants of modern humans?” He writes:
Among the many other human species that once inhabited Earth, the Neanderthals are the most famous. They lived until relatively recently and in many ways, they were like us.
Just in the past few months, we’ve seen tentative evidence of them treating wounds using tar with antibiotic properties made from birch bark. An ancient yellow crayon, made of ochre, gave us a hint of their artistic practices. A well-preserved skull suggested that their noses weren’t adapted for cold climates, as many had thought. Elephant bones from Germany show signs of having been butchered by Neanderthals. There is even suggestive evidence of Neanderthals crossing wide expanses of water.
Marshall then goes through various potential “candidate ancestors” of Neanderthals and explains in each case why they don’t work:
But that leaves out one potential option — our species, Homo sapiens. The idea has been proposed by a highly credible scientist — David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard (including both the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Broad Institute). He argues for this in a new paper at bioRxiv that has not yet been peer-reviewed, “Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ~300,000 years ago explains Neandertal origins.” At New Scientist, Marshall explains Reich’s basic argument:
Reich suggests that the origin of Neanderthals lies in an early migration out of Africa by modern humans. The oldest examples of our species are about 300,000 years old, from Morocco. Reich proposes that some of them wandered into Europe and interbred with the as yet unidentified local hominins, sometime between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.
The resulting hybrids lost most of their modern human DNA, but they did keep their modern human Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA. These hybrids were the Neanderthals. This is a wholesale reinterpretation of the genetic evidence, which would mean those earlier episodes of interbreeding that messed with the Neanderthal Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA weren’t a minor detail: they were the origin of Neanderthals.
This scenario neatly explains a curious archaeological finding. There are distinctive stone artefacts called Levallois tools, which were used in Africa from at least 400,000 years ago (presumably by modern humans), but also in Europe and the Middle East (presumably by Neanderthals) between 480,000 and 300,000 years ago. We might imagine that modern humans and Neanderthals independently invented Levallois tools, but it’s a little neater to suggest that some modern humans took them with them when they left Africa.
Again, Reich’s paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it does advance a fascinating hypothesis. Here’s the abstract, which lays out of the evidence that Reich believes supports the thesis:
This paper demonstrates the feasibility of the hypothesis that Neandertals formed when a population using recently developed Levallois stone tool technology expanded between 400-250 thousand years ago (ka). In Europe, their range expansion into an area with Sima de los Huesos-like people led to massive introgression of local archaic genes producing a population with around 95% archaic ancestry (Neandertals); if this range expansion was sex-biased it would provide a simple explanation for why Neandertals retain modern human lineage Y chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA. In Africa, interbreeding with local archaic humans led to more modest archaic admixture and the deep substructure detected in all modern humans today. This proposal explains four previously perplexing similarities of modern humans and Neandertals — sharing of mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosomes, Levallois tools, and 300-200 ka date of formation by mixture — even while Neandertals and Denisovans cluster genome-wide.
I don’t know if the thesis is true — I anticipate that Reich will get complaints that it requires non-parsimonious losses of particular DNA segments in Neanderthals now known to be specific to modern humans — but certainly it’s no less parsimonious than a lot of other phylogenetic hypotheses out there. Here’s my main point: the very fact that you can propose this hypothesis that Neanderthals are descended from humans and back it up by multiple lines of evidence shows again just how similar we really are. Whatever our exact relationship may be, Neanderthals don’t show that humans are related to a primitive, non-human form.
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Well this is a step up.
I see no reason why they are not considered to be humans, period.
They keep popping up in the Democrat party.
A few years ago I was doing volunteer work at several local hospitals.
I was talking to several nurses at the nurses station one day. Told them, “When I had my open heart surgery they had to cut off my wedding band.”
One of the older nurses said, “That’s more common for men, than women.”
“How so?” I asked.
She said, “When your knuckles drag on the ground, they swell up.”
I still laugh every time I tell that one.
Very similar is true but we were almost at the point of biological separation where offspring would have been sterile, like horses and asses. Male human/Neanderthal hybrids were likely sterile due to subtle genetic changes affecting sperm production. This is the usual explanation for why we see no male Y chromosome descendants of Neanderthals in human populations, at least given the samples so far.
Love to be a fly on the wall during this academic cat fight.
ROTFL! Those dumbass Harvidians.
There are a few members in Congress that seem to support that theory ...
Since we humans are here and Neanderthals are not wouldn’t it be that humans descended from them?
And the NFL.
It's not even that complicated.
Well, we need a 10 million dollar grant to study this. Maybe 20 or 30 million!!
And there are lower animals, also created by God, but not in His image, like us.
If this theory is true, maybe neanderthals are biblical nephelim....
The Neandertal Enigma"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
in local libraries
🙂😊😁😀😃😆😅😂🤣
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