Did Neanderthals Go Extinct?

Neanderthals were the first of the homo genus to face cold and low UVb environment. As such their bodies had to perform multiple adaptations simultaneously.

To withstand the cold they needed to developed thicker, more massive, bodies, which required stronger bones to support.

But the lack of UVb reduced their bodies ability to produce vitamin D.

This in turn made their bones brittle and lowered their fertility and general health.

It is only once their bodies had given up on the production of melanin that they could finally adapt.

But if the thickening of the skin and the size of bones can be affected simply through the epi-genetic layers, Melanin is produced by a specific type of cells - the Melanocytes - through a process called - Melano-Genesis - !

Genetic mutation are 99.99999% deadly!

It took thousands upon thousand of years for their genomes to safely drop melanin production by reducing the amounts of melanocytes (and eventually stopping their production entirely),

And it is the lengthiness of this process, which had to begin with epigenetic modification of the Melanocyte functions, that prevented them from continuing on the evolution path.

By the time their genomes had adapted to this new mode of skin without pigments, there were already very few of them left and Man wise wise was becoming the dominant homo genus species.

It is obvious that the two met and that there wee exchanges of genes between the two species, which has already been proven (in the Y chromosomes at least).

Of course we can easily assume, due to the great difference between the two, that those gene exchange were actually rapes.

And as we look back from today towards that distant past we find groups of people that has retained those particular Neanderthal traits, i.e. skin without pigmentation and red hair.

As we can see in the Vikings and their descendants, the Irish and the Scottish.

But this would imply that Neanderthal didn't fully go extinct.

It is known that the last found remains of ACTUAL Neanderthals was located by the oceanic shores.

It is therefor not a far stretch to estimate that they might have done the same all over, maybe as a way to avoid encounters with the violent hunter/gatherers kown as Homo sapient.

And if that was the case, then all traces of those people would have been washed away at the end of the last ice age during the big melt, about 12 to 11 thousand years ago, as the oceanic shore lines were pushed back up to a mile further inland as massive walls of ice up to a mile high suddenly began to fall into the oceans, due to over melting, raising the ocean levels and causing massive flooding events in this process that lasted for months if not years.

It is most likely that, again, some did survive and then began to mix with the sapient.

Ancient history has lots of tales of these people who were taller and bigger than the sapient, In the Middle-East and ancient Egypt they used to call them Nephilims.

I find it sad when a field of science proclaim to absolute knowledge when they are not using all the data available.

Did Neanderthal go extinct or were they absorbed into our species remain an un-known for the moment.

But trace left by their genomes does persist in ours and that is undeniable!