New Research on the Extinction of the Neanderthals

There are countless movies where the protagonists—you know—save the world, and thus humanity, from a horrific catastrophe that could wipe out all of humanity. that’s in the movies, but it happened that way in real history too—not necessarily with heroes, although, well, any survivor among our ancestors is a hero, because we—the more than 8 billion people we are today—come from a relatively small group of humans.

In ancient times, there were not much more than a million of us, and there were periods when we numbered only a few thousand due to population bottlenecks. Population bottlenecks—caused by catastrophes such as supervolcano eruptions, epidemics, or perhaps a phenomenon that hasn’t been very well studied— but we know it happens—at least in today’s natural world—where a species might evolve more efficiently than ours and we had no response; that is, in the struggle for natural resources at that time, we couldn’t win that battle and were reduced and limited to a handful of human ancestors.

In fact, there was a time about 900,000 years ago when there were only about 3,000 to 5,000 humans—I’m not talking about the humans who later interbred with other species, but our ancestors—because that was the finding of a study based on genetic analysis, that is, all humans on planet Earth today are descended from about 3,000 or 5,000 humans who experienced a major population bottleneck approximately 900,000 years ago. We don’t know why it happened, but for—if I recall correctly—about 50,000 years or more, the human population was constantly on the brink of extinction, so, what would have happened if humans—our species or our lineage—because, really, 900,000 years ago it wasn’t Homo sapiens; our species emerged about 300,000 years ago—but I’m telling you that those 5,000 people who lived 900,000 years ago are our direct ancestors, because this is an analysis of our own genes.

We are the descendants of all those who have survived every mass extinction and catastrophe and have managed to—well, start a family, obviously—and have been able to reproduce. There must be countless ancestral races, ethnic groups, and lost human species, and the vast majority of them have been lost. 300,000 years ago, nature had one, two, or three “Plan Bs”—maybe even four if we include the “flower people,” or hobbits, as they’re also called—but today there is no “Plan B”; we’re the only ones left.

If a virus were to emerge, for example, that attacks humans, there would be no other human species to take our place. In fact, on June 24, 2026, the journal *Nature* published a study that challenges what was previously thought to be the final chapter in the history of the Neanderthals. The traditional hypothesis, well, is that at the end of their existence—a few thousand years before they disappeared from Europe, which was their last refuge, specifically the Iberian Peninsula— they were living only as isolated populations, with high levels of inbreeding that had accumulated over centuries—a factor that decisively contributed to their extinction, since inbreeding produces individuals who are sicker and have more physical defects, which prevented them from surviving in the wild and competing for natural resources. It sounds harsh, but nature makes no exceptions for disabilities; if you have a defect, you starve to death.

This new study analyzed 27 Neanderthal genomes from northwestern Europe and concluded that there is no evidence of inbreeding; it was a healthy population, and there was no genetic deterioration—the genes were fine. They were healthy, strong, genetically sound, and diverse individuals, and they were also more closely related than previously thought. And this debunks the well-known notion of inbreeding. Furthermore, inbreeding is not a cause of extinction. If anything, it would be a secondary factor—one that might have come into play after they were reduced to small, isolated islands—but not at that time.

These 27 Neanderthals—or the remains analyzed—lived about 52,500 years ago. 52,500 years ago was the Ice Age; I’m clarifying this because we usually have the image from illustrations of Neanderthals, hunting mammoths and living among the ice, and so on, but in reality, Neanderthals also had glorious periods with a climate similar to what we have today or even a little warmer, because the last glaciation—the last ice age—began about 115,000 years ago, but Neanderthals had already existed in Europe for 200,000 years or more and were thriving. The thing is, they adapted well to the Ice Age—which is another common misconception.

The fact is that humans—Homo sapiens—arrived in Europe and were better adapted to the Ice Age, and Neanderthals had also adapted. That glacial period ended exactly about 11,700 years ago with a somewhat unusual fluctuation known as the Younger Dryas—a period when the cold suddenly set in, believed to have been caused by the impact of a comet crashing into Earth; there are several theories on the subject.

The point is this: it breaks the pattern. At the end of the Neanderthal era, there was no inbreeding; they were healthy populations and intermarried with one another.

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