“...arrival of modern humans in Europe pushed our ancient Stone Age cousins into extinction...”
I always wondered about that.
If humanoids ‘arrived’ in Europe to find Neanderthals ALREADY there, then WHERE did the Neanderthals came from?
I wish these researchers would write better or do better research because this has always been unclear.
Two migrations out of Africa at different times, hundreds of thousands of years apart?.....................
“If humanoids ‘arrived’ in Europe to find Neanderthals ALREADY there, then WHERE did the Neanderthals came from?”
I believe there were at least three African hominid exoduses. But one theory is that all the various groups were evolving toward us. Some of them looked anatomically modern but do not have any mitochondrial DNA present in today’s humans, meaning they evolved to look like us, which was apparently inherent in the DNA, but died out. This supports the idea that Neanderthals were a further evolved branch of earlier hominids.
There were also several genetic lineages in the new world including one that looked anatomically Caucasian. It and the others were wiped out (or died out) by or coincident with the arrival of the later group that we now call Indians. Groups of humans have been going extinct for millions of years.
In the five to ten thousand year timeframe you can see how the flood of illegals at our southern border may drive Caucasian Americans to extinction.
Earliest are "Early Homo erectus" dating between 1.8 million and 800,000 years ago, found in Spain, Italy, and Georgia.
Then "European Homo erectus (Homo heidelbergensis)" (800,000 to 350,000 years ago), fossil sites found in Spain, Germany, France, England, and Greece.
Then "Ante-Neanderthals (Homo steinheimensis) in Europe" (c. 350,000 to 180,000 before present), found in Germany, England, Hungary, Spain, and Wales.
Then "Early Neanderthals in Europe" (c. 180,000 to 90,000 before present), found at sites in Germany, Croatia, Italy, and Gibraltar.
Finally "Classic Neanderthals in Europe and the Near East (Homo neanderthalensis) (c. 90,000 to 27,000 before present), found at sites in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Kurdistan, Israel, Uzbekistan, Hungary, and Syria.