Genetic research is being used to document Neanderthal and Modern Human contacts and potential inter breeding episodes. This idea is then expanded to account for the discovery of what appear to be modern human remains in North Africa, and elsewhere, even though they are not backed up with skeletal material. Just fragments. Sometimes, wee pieces of skull. However, once such narratives are given the breath of life they appear to expand and expand. This one is the latest attempt to explain away modern human genes in Neanderthals prior to 50,000 years ago. It is what is normally called making a mountain out of a mole hill. I suspect a good deal of modelling was involved. See https://phys.org/news/2024-07-history-contact-geneticists-rewriting-narrative.html … We are told an international team of geneticists were involved in collaboration with ‘AI experts’ – the new method of averaging information. It seems they claim to have found new chapters in human history. They have actually identified multiple waves of modern humans – leading to Neanderthal admixture [to explain the DNA mystery of the Neanderthal genome]. The hominims who are our most direct ancestors, we are told, split from Neanderthals around 600,000 years ago – a long way in advance of the Laschamp Event and the Out of Africa narrative. Our modern physical characteristics evolved around 250,000 years ago. This AI stuff is very clever. Then, modern humans continued to interact with Neanderthals for another 200,000 years – down to the Laschamp Event. Then, Neanderthals disappeared, and also the Denisovans.
The team identified 3 waves of contact between modern humans and Neanderthals. One about 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, another at 100,000 to 120,000 years ago [both interglacial periods], followed by the mainstream Out of Africa movement around 50,000 years ago. That is siad to contrast sharply with previous genetic data – that modern humans evolved in Africa 250,000 years ago [but stayed in Africa for 200,000 years], and dispersing Out of Africa, again, around 50,000 years ago. The AI experts, using previous research findings and rinsing them, now claim modern humans were moving in and out of Africa and encountering Neanderthals and Denisovans over a much longer period of time. In other words, AI used previously research articles rather than actual field evidence.
The researchers also looked for modern human DNA in the genomes of Neanderthals, instead of the other way round, as previously. The offspring of the first and second waves gave Neanderthals their modern human genome – and finally, they realised the Neanderthal population was really quite small. Modern humans had much greater numbers, we are told. A fine piece of uniformitarian deduction, it would seem. Neanderthals died out slowly over a long period of time, is the new mantra. Previously, that had disappeared around the time of the Laschamp Event. One of the researchers said, I don’t like to call it a Neanderthal extinction. Their population slowly shrank until the last survivors were embedded in modern humans. This is called the ‘assimilation model’. Modern humans were compared with waves crashing on a beach, slowly but steadily eroding the beach away. The Neanderthals went into decline and were incorporated into the modern human population. So, what happened to the archaeology where modern humans appear only after the disappearance of Neanderthals – in cave sediments for example. Are geneticists replacing archaeological field research?
See also https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/neanderthals-didnt-truly-go-extinct-but-were-rather-absorbed-into-the-modern-human-population-dna-study-suggest …. which is what you call a method designed to remove the idea of catastrophism from human history. Extinction events are unwanted – even if the end of the Neanderthals coincided with a mass die-off in the animal world.