Were Neanderthals technically our ancestors?

Question

I'm not sure, seeing as they became extinct.

Answer 1

NO! Adam & Eve is EXACTLY the way it happened. We did NOT descend from the APES!

Answer 2

Neanderthals were merely cave-dwelling people that lived a subsistence life-style after Noah's Flood and are part of the human race. Some people think they might have been the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible of certain pre-flood humans of reknowned strength.

http://www.geocities.com/age_of_giants/a...

http://www.gotquestions.org/cavemen.html

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles...

Answer 3

probably, uhhh im' not sure...but somtimes i think about it and...rnt we all technically related in a way??

Answer 4

no they werent. new research studies found that redhaired, green eyed, pale skinned people are the true ancestors. no joke...weird eh?

:O)

Answer 5

Modern dna testing in populations have not found any matches with Neanderthal dna, therefore it looks likely that there was no interbreeding-or,if there was, the children of the union were possibly sterile, as in the case in the animal kingdom when 2 very similar but not identical species breed. (Mules for example.)

Answer 6

yes they were. homo sapiens branched off from them and it is believed sapiens ultimately contributed to their extinction.

Answer 7

No, it is now generally accepted that they were a separate branch on the Hominid Family Tree, and they were either killed off or bred out by the ancestors of Modern humans,

Answer 8

No they probably were not.  Homo heidelbergensis lived in Eurasia through Africa before Neanderthals.  It is believed that H. heidelbergensis split into two populations about 400,000 years ago.  One of these populations became Neanderthals and the other became us.  Some people believe that we have Neanderthal genes but it is not proven.  In fact some Neanderthal DNA that was recovered from some fossils indicates that there was no interbreeding.  Some fossils seem to show features of interbreeding, but I personally am skeptical.  It seems to me that they are simply short limbed modern humans.  Still H. sapiens (us) are so closely related to Neanderthals that it would be somewhat surprising if there were no viable hybrids.

Answer 9

We have a common ancestor, but took a different evolutionary route.  At some point after the ice age, when modern man left Africa, they came to Europe and found Neanderthal, who had been living there, we co-existed for about 40,000 years.  Now either modern man killed off Neanderthal, due to being more sophisticated, or there was interbreeding and we absorbed them.

Answer 10

There are about a dozen genes that show that the 'out of Africa' theory is not possible, and several geneticists have come right out and said so (see blog).

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

Also, a couple of renowned anthropologists have shot 'Out of Africa' to pieces, showing that Neanderthal traits suddenly show up in modern humans.

Also, it turns out that mitochondrial DNA is not 'neutral' and is subject to natural selection just like every other type of DNA, which makes the lack of Neanderthal mt DNA meaningless.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...