>>13691814But even though around 2% of the modern human genome is neanderthal (for most people) there are clear physiological differences between people of only african heritage and those of mixed or pure asian/european/native american heritage, those are all on one spectrum whereas purely african heritage is cut off, meaning they are potentially a different species, and that the evolution of human beings as we know it is actually only as old as our interbreeding event with neanderthals.
This would rationale as to how an entire species just suddenly vanishes or disappears because inevitably those neanderthals who either bred with humans or died would have to disappear eventually.
this also explains why, generally speaking, we dont see any evidence of modern human advancement or civilizations until about the disappearance of the neanderthals, which is 30,000 years ago, vs the oldest homosapien skeleton which is far far older than that.
What makes more sense to you, that we didnt actually become fully human until we crossed over with neanderthals, and that this is why we cant find any civilizations older than about 10,000 BC, or that humans as a fully developed dna have been around for up to 500,000 years at the least, but some estimates put this up to 2 million years.
I know what i think sounds more plausible, that we didnt actually become the human race as we understand it until fairly recently. Whether this be through neanderthals or denisovans etc, its probably the neanderthals since most modern humans have that DNA and they were positioned close enough to africa to have had the biggest impact on humanities development.