alt Hacker News> Neanderthals from 400kya are often classed as Heidelbergensis.
Heidelbergensis is the last common anscestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and us.
We were all around for just as long, 400kya+, and before that, it was Homo Erectus.
All of them, Erectus, Heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Sapiens were walking around at the same time. There's plenty of fossil records we've uncovered that show that to be true.
It was only in the last 100k years or so that we remained and the other variants "died out".
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True, but I'm guessing they're referring to anatomically modern humans which have only been here for a couple hundred thousand years. Not sure that's a meaningful way to look at it since I'm assume Neanderthals also evolved somewhat during that time.
Did they really die out, or did the population just merge with modern humans? Most people on the planet have some Neanderthal DNA, so clearly there was some intermixing. If modern humans were a much larger population, it makes sense that the Neanderthals only contributed a small amount of DNA to the gene pool. I could imagine that they were just slowly absorbed into the much larger Sapiens population.
Heidlebergensis is no longer thought to be on the sapiens lineage. It's probably the ancestor of neanderthals and denisovans. 400kya is around the time of this divergence, based on recent genomics. They were the same species at this time.
The Sapiens lineage is now thought to have diverged significantly earlier.
Erectus existed, but in pockets.
Other lineages existed also. At the very least, Homo naledi. Probably other dwarf lineages, an African "ghost lineage" and probably others.
Neanderthals and denisovans are structured... With subspecies, hybrid zones and whatnot.
There are also many sapiens lineages with no descendants. Most of them.