…Given the changes in culture and the evidence in our own genes, the new timeline could further bolster a leading theory for the end of the Neanderthals: mating with humans.
Breeding with the larger human population could have meant that, over time, Neanderthals were “effectively swallowed into our gene pool,” Djakovic said.
“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.”
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