[tomzz]

The basic logic of that chart is defective. Heidelbergensis and erectus were both more primitive than the neanderthal and the neanderthal has been ruled out as a human ancestor for being too primitive. We still use the western logical system in which A > B and B > C implies A > C.

[From many - one.]

I don't think you understand how that chart works.

[bobdsmith]

Neandertal has not been ruled out as a human ancestor for being too primitive. I am not expert but I understand Neandertal lived alongside cro-magnon man for thousands of years. That much has been known for a while. So Neandertal are considered cousins of humans - the question is where they went. Did they merge into cro-magnon populations or were they driven to extinction? The mDNA comparisons suggest the latter. The page you linked to says nothing about "primitiveness".

[ahayes]

No, Neaderthal was not ruled out for being too primitive, it was ruled out because the mitochondrial DNA is too divergent from ours for it to be our ancestor. This isn't particularly surprising, either, for the past thirty years or so Neanderthal has been thought to be a sister species to Homo sapiens. Prior to that it was thought that Neanderthals were a subspecies of Homo sapiens. I'm not sure that it was ever thought among the scientific community that they were our evolutionary ancestors, if so not for a good long time!