Neanderthal DNA Admixture

Our understanding of the interplay between the different groups of early humans and their relationship to us has been done a disservice by the artificial lines we've drawn in the sand. The Neanderthal and the Denisovan interbred. Both are the ancestors of modern humans, and on the same level of our family tree (i.e. the same number of generations ago). To proclaim that one group is homo sapiens and the other is not amounts to a weird sort of racism against our own ancestors, leading to the

Not only they are humans (homo neanderthalensis vs homo sapiens, but both homo) but there are traces of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans, since there was interbreading among them. So, no wonder they are comparable to us, since they are not that much different than us on evolutionary timescale.

The idea is that homo sapiens sapiens (us) is not the only descendant of homo erectus, and there are genetic proofs that we interbreed with Neanderthals for example:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_genetics

Everyone except africans has some non-trivial amount of Neanderthal DNA in them.According to popular science that is.https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-an...).

From the abstract:> Neandertals and Denisovans are the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans. Analyses of their genomes showed that they contributed genetically to present-day people outside sub-Saharan AfricaSo there is already Neandertal hybrids walking around (I'm one of them). I think they should get full human status.

Even Neanderthal's have African roots,so i do not see why anyone is struggling to make distinctions

We haven't eradicated them, we have bred with them. Most of us are the decendents of both the sub-Saharan people and Neanderthal people and some of us are the descendants of sub-Saharan people, Neanderthal people, and the Denosovan people (three different species). If we are all human now then why is only one ancient population from Africa called human.

Modern humans have very low genetic diversity. There are more genetic variations among apes in a single group than among all humans on the whole planet. A typical interpretation of this is that we are descendants of small group of survivors, but whatever the reason the consequences is that the genetic variation between Neanderthals and humans can be in fact within normal variation within single species, we just do not have enough data.

neanderthals might be our ancestors, atleast in part.

Maybe they simply got merged into us? We all have neanderthal ancestry.