Did the Neanderthals and Homospaiens from thousands of years ago go extinct and we are their great grand children? Like most of us have some Neanderthal DNA so does that mean they never died out?

Question

I was just thinking about this, and wanted to ask

In: Biology

Answer 1

Modern Humans (capital H) are only one of several species of humans (lowercase h) that existed in the past, the same way that there are different kinds of tigers and dolphins and owls, etc.

For various reasons, we are the only kind of humans who survived to the modern day, but there were tens of thousands of years when Humans existed with or near other humans in various places around the world.

Neanderthals were a kind of human that mostly lived in the warmer parts of Europe and western Asia. Denisovans were another kind of human that lived in Asia (we don’t have as much information on specifically where other than what is now Siberia).

Humans mostly stayed in Africa for a long time, but at one point a lot of Humans spread out to these areas where the other humans had been living.

We probably weren’t always friendly, but at least on a few occasions the Humans who moved out of Africa had babies with Neanderthals and Denisovans (and probably other species of humans!) who grew up and had babies with other Humans, and some of the DNA from those other humans eventually found its way into pretty much all of the Humans in those parts of the world today.