Shocking DNA Evidence Suggests Science Has “Lost Its Way” in Believing Homo sapiens Are the Only Surviving Human Species.
Neanderthals are another species within the genus Homo (Human) alongside Homo sapiens, which refers to modern humans.
This other species disappeared from the archaeological record over 30,000 years ago and was believed to be extinct. However, a recent study published in the journal Science has provided shocking information while attempting to understand the instances where our ancestors interbred with them.
The last Neanderthals did not disappear suddenly but were gradually absorbed into the modern human population? – (AI Image: Anh Thư)
For a long time, we have known that modern humans carry about 1-2% Neanderthal DNA in their blood, a result of interspecies mating that was quite common in the past.
But this time, scientists took a different approach.
“We know much less about how these encounters affected the Neanderthal genome“ – said Joshua Akey, a senior author of the study and a population geneticist at Princeton University (USA).
They analyzed Neanderthal fossils from Vindija Cave in Croatia (dating back 50,000-65,000 years) and the Chagyrskaya and Denisova Caves in Russia (50,000-80,000 years ago).
These were populations that had not interbred with Homo sapiens. However, they already carried 2.5-3.7% Homo sapiens DNA in their bodies!
This shocking analysis has helped researchers trace back to two periods of interbreeding between the two species, 200,000-250,000 years ago and another period 100,000-120,000 years ago, indicating that these interactions occurred even before these species left Africa.
Gene analysis also suggests that the Neanderthal population may have been up to 20% smaller than previously inferred.
Moreover, the aforementioned findings lead to another groundbreaking discovery: Neanderthals did not actually go extinct.
They disappeared, but not in the way any plant or animal species has dwindled in the full sense of the word “extinction.”
We do not find clear hybrid children between the two species when studying the remains of Homo sapiens ancestors, as it seems that most hybrid children remained with the Neanderthal population, potentially including one Homo sapiens parent.
This could have contributed to the reason for their disappearance. New interbreeding partners continuously introduced Homo sapiens blood into Neanderthal populations.
The continuous waves of modern humans migrating out of Africa eventually overwhelmed the Neanderthals’ ability to maintain a separate population.
Ultimately, interspecies marriages gradually led the remaining Neanderthals to be completely absorbed into the numerically and genetically dominant Homo sapiens population.
In other words, they never truly went extinct; instead, they merged into and contributed to a distinct Homo sapiens population that is different from the original.
