More evidence published that Neanderthals were little different from "modern humans"

They suffered from a severe lack of imagination.

According to Curran, this discovery has significant implications for our understanding of human evolution, suggesting that early hominins may have had a widespread presence across Eurasia long before the more established hominin sites in Europe.
"The Grăunceanu site represents a pivotal moment in our understanding of human prehistory, Curran said. "It demonstrates that early hominins had already begun to explore and inhabit diverse environments across Eurasia, showing an adaptability that would later play a crucial role in their survival and spread."
 
The very idea that homo sapiens is a fundamentally distinct branch of mankind (or rather, that the claimed extinct branches that in fact merged into what are now "modern humans" were fundamentally different) cannot stand in face of the evidence of intermixing. Contrary to what @Birdjaguar says, it is the out of Africa theory that was born of an era of racist scientists to whom different "races" of humans were backwards or modern, with the modern necessarily exterminating the backwards. They were, as were almost all "cultured men" even past the mid 20th century, infected with eugenics and its worldview of competition and extermination.

The idea that Neandethals and Denisovans are different species from Homo Sapiens is indeed disputed. A species is defined by the ability to produce fertile offspring, which is the case here. Now that doesn't really change the fact that Neanderthal populations got supplanted by Sapiens populations in Europe from 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Also "supplanted" doesn't necessarily means "exterminated", we have absolutely no clue how it happened.

It's also important to note that we're talking here about very small groups of people. Northern Europe was covered by ice and uninhabitable. Southern Europe essentially consisted of cold and dry steppes. It is estimated there were from 5,000 to 50,000 Neanderthals living all accross Europe 40,000 years ago (very difficult to get accurate estimates). About 30,000 years ago, it is estimated there were from 100,000 to 150,000 Sapiens. Considering that people were living in groups of 30 individuals. That makes on average a single of such group every 500 km² or so. That's really not a lot.

Also it's important to mention that those people, be that Neanderthals or Sapiens, are not the ancestors of modern Europeans. They all got overwhelmed by the much more numerous Anatolian neolithic farmers who progressively took over the continent from 6,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE.
 
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I have been insisting on pointing out these news and revisions in order to show how little "we" actually know about the remote past of mankind, and how much all these theories are just conjectures born of very thin, and often very misinterpreted, remnants.
Is there ironclad evidence that there was a wholesale population replacement with descendants of neholithic farmers originating in asia minor? Or is it one of those things like the horsemen hordes based on a false interpretation of tooth wear on a handful of horse skulls?

This is not settled science because the archeological evidence is too thin. There is no idea of how much time has simply erased from the available record. May never be settled. What is clear now, and overthew dogma based on false certainties in the past, is that populations mingled, didn't just wipe one another away. One of the guys, I know him, who first fough that dogma had his evidence dismissed as "it's just a skeleton and you're interpreting it wrong". He wasn't, and genetic evidence later forced others to accept that the "consesus view" had been wrong. But the "settled science gatekeepers" tried to prevent paradigm change when he published.

This happens a lot in sciences. Khun had it right.
 
I have been insisting on pointing out these news and revisions in order to show how little "we" actually know about the remote past of mankind, and how much all these theories are just conjectures born of very thin, and often very misinterpreted, remnants.
Is there ironclad evidence that there was a wholesale population replacement with descendants of neholithic farmers originating in asia minor? Or is it one of those things like the horsemen hordes based on a false interpretation of tooth wear on a handful of horse skulls?

This is not settled science because the archeological evidence is too thin. There is no idea of how much time has simply erased from the available record. May never be settled. What is clear now, and overthew dogma based on false certainties in the past, is that populations mingled, didn't just wipe one another away. One of the guys, I know him, who first fough that dogma had his evidence dismissed as "it's just a skeleton and you're interpreting it wrong". He wasn't, and genetic evidence later forced others to accept that the "consesus view" had been wrong. But the "settled science gatekeepers" tried to prevent paradigm change when he published.

This happens a lot in sciences. Khun had it right.

We have thousands of samples of people living in the past 10,000 years in Europe. Genetics allow to determine parenting, and it's pretty clear that modern populations are far more connected to those living 10,000 years ago in Anatolia and Near East than to those living in Europe at the time. Now rather than opposing "mingling" and "extermination", you need to take into account population dynamics. Nomadic hunters gatherers demographics stagnated at very low numbers, whereas the population of sedentary farmers boomed to the point they became far more numerous. When a new population gets 20 times more numerous than an older one, it dominates, no matter how friendly or hostile they were.
 
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I have been insisting on pointing out these news and revisions in order to show how little "we" actually know about the remote past of mankind, and how much all these theories are just conjectures born of very thin, and often very misinterpreted, remnants.
Is there ironclad evidence that there was a wholesale population replacement with descendants of neholithic farmers originating in asia minor? Or is it one of those things like the horsemen hordes based on a false interpretation of tooth wear on a handful of horse skulls?

This is not settled science because the archeological evidence is too thin. There is no idea of how much time has simply erased from the available record. May never be settled. What is clear now, and overthew dogma based on false certainties in the past, is that populations mingled, didn't just wipe one another away. One of the guys, I know him, who first fough that dogma had his evidence dismissed as "it's just a skeleton and you're interpreting it wrong". He wasn't, and genetic evidence later forced others to accept that the "consesus view" had been wrong. But the "settled science gatekeepers" tried to prevent paradigm change when he published.

This happens a lot in sciences. Khun had it right.
Genetic evidence is adding to and supplanting the archaeology regarding the who and where of prehistoric peoples. The genetics is forcing a paradigm shift. It took 20 years for the slow pokes to accept warm blooded, active dinosaurs.


Theses studies were not done by 19th c racists.

 
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We have thousands of samples of people living in the past 10,000 years in Europe. Genetics allow to determine parenting, and it's pretty clear that modern populations are far more connected to those living 10,000 years ago in Anatolia and Near East than to those living in Europe at the time. Now rather than opposing "mingling" and "extermination", you need to take into account population dynamics. Nomadic hunters gatherers demographics stagnated at very low numbers, whereas the population of sedentary farmers boomed to the point they became far more numerous. When a new population gets 20 times more numerous than an older one, it dominates, no matter how friendly or hostile they were.

Granted. But as short as 20 years ago the hypothesis - which had evidence backing it - of intermingling of populations was being shut down hard by gatekeepers with great certainties that could not be. Again: that has been my complaint all along.: certainties built on scant evidence.
Even though genetics helped end those false certainties, I will also tell you: beware sweeping statements such as "Genetics allow to determine parenting". Also, nothing can be knowt of population dinamics 50000 years ago. Hypothesis can be inferred from the scant material vestiges we have, and then by making comparisons with the recent history of supposedly well-known populations, and that is it. There have also been well-know cases of academic fraud by antropologists studying "primitive peoples" in the 19th and 20th centuries, who disseminated false ideas, some still influencing scientists today. Want to bed all frauds were caught?
 
Granted. But as short as 20 years ago the hypothesis - which had evidence backing it - of intermingling of populations was being shut down hard by gatekeepers with great certainties that could not be. Again: that has been my complaint all along.: certainties built on scant evidence.
Even though genetics helped end those false certainties, I will also tell you: beware sweeping statements such as "Genetics allow to determine parenting". Also, nothing can be knowt of population dinamics 50000 years ago. Hypothesis can be inferred from the scant material vestiges we have, and then by making comparisons with the recent history of supposedly well-known populations, and that is it. There have also been well-know cases of academic fraud by antropologists studying "primitive peoples" in the 19th and 20th centuries, who disseminated false ideas, some still influencing scientists today. Want to bed all frauds were caught?
That is the way science works. Over time the wrong ideas get replaced with new ones that usually are better. Fraudsters get caught, eventually. But keep in mind that many ideas from previous centuries were not presented as frauds. They were thought at the time to be valid. You don't seem to like the current "out of Africa" genetic evidence or the the whole idea of a small group origin story for modern people. What is your alternative? Do you have any actual evidence for whatever your thoughts are? Or are you just saying "those people" are just wrong because you disagree? IIRC Newton was also an alchemist trying to turn lead into gold. Does that mean all his other work should be thrown out? You say "beware of sweeping statements..." and yet you make them all the time about how bad the science is.

What do you find wrong about the link I posted above?
 
Is is precisely because they were not frauds, but people thinking they were right, that science has these problems changing paradigms.

My evidence? The hypothesis that humans didn't spread easily in that -300000 to - 60000 years perior would require exceptionally strong evidence for it to be acceptable, as it contradicts other accepted theories. Consider the Americas, where human spread is more consensual because more recent. The current consensus is that the original population crossed into the continent through the far north, and spread south from there. Between roughly 25000 to 15000 years ago humans spread north-to-south (crossing climate zones, which is harder) through a distance and space nearly as vast as the whole Eurasia. Their available transportation technology and food collection techniques were stone age, same as the previous 2000000 years. But I am supposed to believe that humans did not, could not for some unknown reason, spread within Africa fast, or across Eurasia? This is reason enough to for me to be skeptical: my evidence for skepticism is the lack of evidence for the slow spread and no mixing theories in the old world plus the evidence that fast spread very much could and did happen in a more difficult continent.

I didn't comment on the study you linked to because while it was a good effort their sample is simply too small. 800 individuals to sample 200000 years means (if they were evenly distributed, best case, which they weren't) one individual each 250 years. To infer population dinamics for half the planet? How strong do you think any conclusion from such a study can be?
Would you accept a historical study of population dynamics in Eurasia was possible by randomly sampling one individual from comewhere in the continent each 250 years? If not, why should you accept that for a pre-historical period study? Because there is no more evidence available? Though luck: we can not reach any conclusions. Better to admit what is not and cannot be known that to have certainties. Such a study may raise interesting new hypothesis. It may diisprove some hypothesis by finding evidence of something the hypothesis claimed was impossible. But it cannot prove any theory about the evolution of populations acrsso such a large space and long time.
 
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