[Cowboy Bob]

a distant echo of admixture when our ancestors left Africa and encountered Neanderthals,

So, they are saying that Neanderthals did not originate in Africa? There were no monkeys in Europe to evolve from.

Maybe the hoards coming out of Africa killed all the Neanderthals. Sort of like what is happening with Europeans today.

[Mercat]

There were many species of apes in Europe millions of years ago.

[Verginius Rufus]

The ancestors of the Neanderthals would have lived in Africa, but would have moved out to the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia before "anatomically modern" humans first appeared in Africa.

23andMe claims to be to identify DNA inherited from Neanderthals in the samples it tests. Supposedly most people, other than those who are 100% of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, have some Neanderthal DNA--Asians more than Europeans.

I think there are Barbary apes in Gibraltar, which is in Europe--they are actually monkeys, not apes.

[gleeaikin]

Hominid ancestors who had been part of the evolutionary path from monkeys and apes had migrated to Europe over a million years ago. The Neanderthals were in a line of evolution from those earlier hominids.