Igor Djakovic in Leiden has a model, or something. With Bayes. Neanderthals in the region went extinct between 40,870 and 40,457 years ago, while modern humans first appeared around 42,500 years ago.
So... they mixed - effectively swallowed into our gene pool ... When you combine that with what we know now—that most people living on Earth have Neanderthal DNA — you could make the argument that they never really went extinct, in a certain sense.
Someone else will have to make that argument because Djakovic sure hasn't.
Firstly we already knew Neanders and postAfricans met in Europe circa 40k BC, and mixed; from Oase and Bacho Kiro. More to the point those mixes are not the ancestors of modern Eurasians whose Neander/human forebears mixed ... in Eurasia, southeast. The Balkan mutts got wiped as, we must assume, whatever happened northwest of them. The hunter-gatherers of the Germania up north weren't from that mix; they were from our Near Eastern mix and/or not mixed at all (Basal Eurasian?).
I hope Djakovic knows this, that what he's found has no bearing on the article's conclusion. This might not be Djakovic's fault so much as Lawler's framing.
BACKDATE 10/14 - Caught this one from Saraceni.
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