Talk:Neanderthal

Earliest Date of Emergence

There seems to be considerable debate around when Neanderthals first emerged.

Previously, there were attempts to place an unsourced and dubious date of 130,000 years ago on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neanderthal&oldid=1286961318 Luckily, these attempts were shutdown. However, if we are to make a distinction between Early Neanderthals (430,000) and late Neanderthals (100,000-35,000) this can be mentioned on the Wikipedia page whilst still keeping the date of 430,000.

The census, with debate, is that what we would call a Neanderthal emerged c. 430,000 years ago. Not 240,000.

I will not edit the Neanderthal page, but I believe with discussion we can reflect the earlier date on the page.

This will be in line with numerous other Wikipedia pages that state Homo Neanderthal emerged far earlier than 240,000 years ago. Hayden371 (talk) 10:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

430,000 year old specimens like from the Sima de los Huesos are not called "Early Neanderthal" by anyone. This was discussed in Talk:Neanderthal/Archive 7#Recent edit 2 (which didn't actually conclude, I admit) but do read through that first Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 22:00, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

is the more relevant and recent (2025) discussion. Ultimately, there appears to be a degree of abritraryness about where the line is drawn about when "true" Neanderthals, rather than merely Neanderthal line hominins, emerged, and thus the answer to this question is subjective. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:06, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

The fact that the Sima de los Huesos hominins have been found to be genetically of the Neanderthal line should probably be mentioned in the evolution section. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:21, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Either Early Neanderthals or members of a population ancestral to Neanderthals  Tewdar  23:05, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply, Dunkleosteus77. And thank you for linking me the previous talk page!

I used the terms Early Neanderthal, because this is the current accepted term used by the Natural History Museum of Great Britain. It is also used on the Wikipedia page for Neanderthals!

"The first recognisable "early Neanderthals" show up in the fossil record by the end of Marine Isotope Stage 7 (beginning roughly 243,000 years ago) and give way to "classic" or "late Neanderthals" by the end of Marine Isotope Stage 5e."

I do appreciate that the term is not a scientific one, but it seems acceptable enough to be used when discussing the evolutionary differences between Neanderthals from 400,000 years ago and 40,000 to a mainstream audience.

I forgot to add, that as it currently stands the page for Homo Sapiens claim that they emerged 300,000 years ago, putting them before Neanderthals. This claim, I contest. Neanderthals emerged before according to many metrics.

Thank you again for your response! Hayden371 (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes that date for modern humans cites the Jebel Irhoud site which, while popular in media, I wouldn't say is universally accepted in academia (see https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07426-4_1). Feel free to correct me but when researchers talk about European specimens between MIS 12 and 7 they aren't describing them as specifically neanderthalensis (the scope of this article) but rather on the Neanderthal lineage or heidelbergensis or do not comment on species attribution. Consider #Fire where species attribution was not given. The classification of Middle Pleistocene humans is extremely vague because of the species problem / at what point do we draw a line that this is no longer modern or Neanderthal; and I've tried portraying this in the Evolution section with Neanderthalization is a series of population crashes and losses of genetic/physiological diversity. In other words, from what the sources I've seen say, people start saying Neanderthal as a noun instead of an adjective when its younger than MIS 7 Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 01:45, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Neandertals inside of human variation

Hello @Dunkleosteus77, @Gawaon and @Anteosaurus magnificus,

as a linguistics student, I don't have any anthropological expertise. I am therefore reaching out for help because I have hit a wall regarding an issue with the relevant German-language article: citing the study listed below—which indeed presents the matter this way—the article claims that, genetically speaking, Neanderthals fall within the range of variation of modern humans. Against this background, I wonder if this implies that the genetic distance between Neanderthals and modern humans is actually not  greater than that among different populations of modern humans. However, this does not seem plausible to me since the genomes of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are 99.7% identical whilst the degree of similarity betweenny two populations of modern humans is at least 99.9%. Perhaps you could comment on this—explaining how the study should actually be interpreted—or recommend other sources, since you all have contributed a lot to this stuff on Wikipedia. I find it difficult to believe that Neanderthals are genetically comparable to other populations of modern humans, although I am aware that some scholars, such as Svante Pääbo, have argued that there is objectively no clear-cut method for categorizing them as a distinct species.

Best regards

Richard E. Green et al.: A draft sequence of the Neandertal Genome. In: Science. Vol. 328, No. 5979, 2010, pp. 710–722

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44578602_A_Draft_Sequence_of_the_Neandertal_Genome LinguaScriptor (talk) 10:08, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

The genetic distance between different groups of H. Sapiens is, when being compared to other species, zero.

There's ~3GB of data inside a human genome. a .1% difference boils down to 3MB, or 20x the size of this talk page's corresponding article, including citations.

And the difference between a .1% and .3% difference is very, very, very profound. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 13:14, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

This is totaly case by case, there is no way to a priori know the effect of a mutation without the context of the rest of the genome and organism. If those differences are in non-translating regions neither will mean anything at all to the phenotype, vs a single mutation can render a human genome totally incompatible with life. Mausfield (talk) 17:10, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Well you're describing the species problem, at what point is it (sub)species A and at what point is it (sub)species B? And yes there are Neanderthal specimens which can overlap with the range of variation for modern humans. Like the Neanderthal nose is not exactly outside the range of variation for modern humans it's just very uncommon, and the skull shape normally (but not everytime) falls outside modern variation. Neanderthals also universally lack a chin though mandibles in the human fossil record aren't as abundant as skullcaps, but I can go on it's the concept of "Neanderthalization" where populations in closer proximity to modern humans (the Levant most notably) look less than the classical picture of a Neanderthal than populations in Western Europe. I suppose consider modern great ape species, the Tapanuli orangutan can be said to have diverged from the Bornean orangutan 600 kya but still interbred with Sumatran orangutans within the last 10 or 20 ka so at what point do we say the populations were isolated enough for speciation and would they even consider each other to be different? Or even genetically how distinct is distinct? Linguistically it's a word and a word is a box we impose to make it easier to talk about, which isn't necessarilly bad but it's still a box which nature doesn't cleanly fit inside of Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 03:51, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. So, would you say that although Neanderthals overlap with the range of human variation, they nevertheless have a greater morphological and genetic distance from modern humans than the individual populations of modern humans have from one another? LinguaScriptor (talk) 07:17, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

"Range of variation" is a morphological description. There are not "ranges of variation" when looking at genomes because you simply use absolute divergence. Selection and drift can do things to morphology which place one group in the range of variation in another group, but phylogeny is not ultimately about phenotypes, it is about lineages, which means genetics.

although I am aware that some scholars, such as Svante Pääbo, have argued that there is objectively no clear-cut method for categorizing them as a distinct species.

It's an important point, but easy to confuse since you kinda jumped into Season 7 of this topic and are missing the fundamentals, something we see quite a bit in evolutionary biology (often well-intentioned). He's referring to the fact that, as a broad topic in biology, there is no absolute threshold for defining speciation based on sequence divergence, since what really defines a species is reproductive isolation. There are humans who are reproductively incompatible based on mutations which will render offspring non-viable (like infant Tay Sachs), obviously this doesn't mean they're different species. In contrast there are species which are biologically compatible but for other reasons do not reproduce in the wild, thus they do not experience gene flow. Those reasons can be behavioral, geospatial, etc, as a category we call them prezygotic isolation.

Futher, mutations are random, and divergence also includes non-translating regions. So what portion of the divergence between two genomes contributes to post-zygotic isolation (ie, lineages attempting to mix but biologically unable) is also random. Species A and Species B may have 2% absolute sequence divergence but only a single nucleotide mutation actually produced that incompatibility, vs Species C and D may have 4% sequence divergence and be able to produce viable offspring. In other areas of biology such as microbiology this is a major present issue, resulting in bandaid concepts like operational taxonomic unit or the later amplicon sequence variant. From Janda and Abbott, 2007:

Whereas 16S rRNA gene sequence data can be used for a multiplicity of purposes, unlike DNA hybridization (>70% reassociation) there are no defined “threshold values” (e.g., 98.5% similarity) above which there is universal agreement of what constitutes definitive and conclusive identification to the rank of species.

Lastly:

However, this does not seem plausible to me since the genomes of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are 99.7% identical whilst the degree of similarity betweenny two populations of modern humans is at least 99.9%

This has a lot to do with what a reference genome is, and how genetic variation exists in and between recently related populations. As a near statistical certainty, there are many positions in your genome in which you are closer to a Neanderthal than I am, even if I have a greater Neanderthal ancestry component than you. That is because the sapiens and Neanderthal lineages diverged not from a single individual, but from a population which itself contained variation, and that variation was not arbitrarily sorted such that each allele only existed in one lineage. This is a complex but enlightening topic called incomplete lineage sorting. If you want a crazier fact, there are sequences in my genome where I am closer to a gorilla than to you. We derive this fact from coalescence analysis, eg how many generations ago did a hypothetical segment in the human genome, which today contains some number of variants, share a common ancestor. For some parts of the human genome, that date range is over 20 million years, around double the time depth of the Gorilla–human last common ancestor. Bottlenecks, selection, and drift prune variation, which can shorten this time depth. The time depth here also means the "who is closer to a gorilla" thing is completely irrelevant to human ethnic groups, which are all far, far younger than that divergence.

In Neanderthal-sapiens hybrids, it seems there was also a parental sex bias in viability, where almost exclusively male neanderthal-female sapiens seem to have left genetic footprints. We do not know why this is, and it probably has a cultural element in at least one actual admixture event. There also appears to be evidence of Haldane's rule at work, where male hybrid offpsring (irrespective of which parent was a Neanderthal) were infertile or less fertile vs females.

tl;dr if you see a contradition in a topic you are not very well trained in, its more likely a gap in your knowledge than an actual contradiction Mausfield (talk) 17:09, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thank you so much for your answer! I appreciate the clarification. I think the distinction between morphological variation, genetic divergence, and the biological definition of species is particularly important here. My original question was ultimately motivated by wanting to avoid precisely the kind of oversimplification that someone without a background in evolutionary biology might otherwise take away from the discussion.

With kind regards LinguaScriptor (talk) 10:36, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Sorry about missing this response. Your goal is exactly the right one to have: simplifying down to commonly held misunderstandings just because people are comfortable with them is a bad idea. There is a big Dunning–Kruger effect in the topic of speciation, which I'm guessing you've noticed or anticipated in the people reeading your contributions. People read a bit about the concept of species and often begin overconfidently drive-by criticizing taxa said to be speciated under their newfound, supposedly "more elevated" stance that they are the same species, since they can reproduce kinda. In reality, on the other side of that Dunning-Kruger valley is not simply knee-jerk lumping any hybridizing populations together, but a deeper and way less restrictive understanding that species are just one or more populations in a trenchcoat. We use species to describe when a meaningful amount of genetic divergence exists between two populations of recent shared ancestry, whether or not it presents a biological barrier to reprodction. Now in reality divergence is runaway: it is both caused by and results in reproductive barrier as variation accumulates, but as a definition two species do not have to be biologically unable to produce viable offspring, merely it has to be the case that in their natural populations, they don't. Pre-zygotic barriers as a category are speciations which are not actually biologically imcompatible, rather spatially or (eg in bird songs) behaviorally, etc. You can get variants rendered totally reproductively isolated despite the physiology being fully compatible, as is the case with many male songbirds who do not properly learn their species song(s). This isn't a "violation" of the biological species concept, it just requires the realization that its not exactly about the physiology of reproduction, its about reproduction itself: reproducing mixes genetic separation back into the population, diluting accumulated differences back into the pool and blurring the lines between groups. Two groups with strong lines can mix a bit and retain the large part of their genetic identity. That seems to be the case with humans and Neanderthals.

But of course we also probably have some kind of physiological issue, though its complicated. I think that's the main argument against lumping for the people who actually work on archaics, because its just simpler. AMH-N hybridizing is just that: hybridizng. It really does not appear to be straightforward reproduction without genetic complications. Something is probably going on with sex-biased infertility (which may be male-biased and thus a Haldane's rule situation, or its cultural), but the lineage replacement vibe also flipflops: at the 250kya introgression event from AMH into N, our mtDNA and ChrY lineages beat out those of the Neanderthals, as well as 6-7% of their autosomal DNA. At the 42-54kya N introgressions into us, the introgressing Neanderhtal X gets selected out. That is a weird, and we now know as of just a couple months ago (the Hajdinjak group at the MPI EVA) that the inbreeding depression thing is toast: 27 new Neanderthal genomes from Meuse Basin in Belgium have no evidence of recent human introgression, a big and very ancient pre-Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestral component, none of the excess homozygosity that Altai has, and none of the mythical mutation burden so many people for some reason love to pretend was not always speculative. Vindija is a composite genome (like 98% three individials from Vindija, a bit of Neanderthal 1 and one other dude), whereas Altai is a high-coverage of one actual person, but that doesn't really go anywhere close to explaining that this simply does not look like admixture between two populations with a long, constant history of admixture, ie a single species regularly maintaining its shared genetic identity. It looks like two majorly diverged groups bouncing off each other with substantial complications, and carrying genetic records of those events which are easily identifiable precisely because of how different they were going into the admixture. I think sensible people who understand evolution would call those different species.

For what it's worth, David Reich thinks that a very basal modern human population migrated into Europe ~300kya, majorly admixed with a the indigenous Sima de los Huesos-like population, gave them Levallois tech, and resulted in classical Neanderthals, but they still only had ~6% modern human ancestry. Nothing close enough to questioning their capacity as a separate species I think. I personally do not know what to make of that, and I do not feel comfortable disagreeing with Reich's holistic interpretation of the popullation genetics, he is the world's foremost authority on this topic. Mausfield (talk) 02:27, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

The species problem is a debate about the fundamental definitions of species and whether they have intrinsic value. It is not relevant to modern humans and Neanderthals right now where the question of speciation is very simply due to a lack of resolution on the population genetics. Further, there is not a single Neanderthal genome anywhere in the range of human genetic variation, every one we have clusters as an outgroup against the entire human population with zero ambiguity, easily eclipsing the divergence between the most distant human populations. They are so different we identified their introgressions in modern humans before we even had Neanderthal genomes.

Please read this paper (Pyron et al 2026, "The species problem evolving in the Anthropocene" ) from earlier this year, and consider reviewing what the species problem actually is. It is a debate about the fundamental definitions of species and whether they have intrinsic value. It is a debate about any two particular taxa, those are just normal cladistic disputes entirely unrelated to the species problem.

To put it another way: in a decade when we have perhaps a four or five hundred Neanderthal genome and a generally rock-solid computed phylogeny, then the species debate can begin and people can discuss whether that divergence and its periodic interruptions through admixture qualifies as speciation philosophically. Mausfield (talk) 22:08, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful explanation and for sharing the paper. I appreciate the insights and will take the time to read the article carefully. It is a fascinating topic, and I look forward to learning more about it. LinguaScriptor (talk) 21:30, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

'group of archaic humans'

The opening sentence says"Neanderthals ... are an extinct group of archaic humans..." What is a "group"? Should this not read "Neanderthal ... is an extinct species of archaic human..."? This would be consistent with the other WP articles on hominids that I have looked at. I am not an expert, so I may have misunderstood. Thanks. Masato.harada (talk) 15:26, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I guess it's because whether they are indeed a distinct species or just a subspecies is contested (see Neanderthal § Classification). Gawaon (talk) 02:23, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

@Gawaon Given @Mausfields mention above of a study "as of just a couple months ago (the Hajdinjak group at the MPI EVA)" is there a consensus now one way or the other? If not is there a majority view amongst experts? I see the short description says "species" Chidgk1 (talk) 13:41, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

I guess it's because whether they are indeed a distinct species or just a subspecies is contested (see Neanderthal § Classification). The current section is written by editors who do not understand the debate in its technical details, particularly population genetics. I am trying to remedy this.

is there a consensus now one way or the other? You don't really reach consensus on a whole paradigm the field has abandoned, which is giving things binomial nomenclature based on guesswork of what a skull looks like. We objectively analyize phylogenetic trees and define the nodes and branches with molecular data like DNA and gene products (like proteins). The formal debate is not "were Neanderthals a species or subspecies" because those terms do not have objective definitions in the post-genetics world. I cannot find recent papers focusing on this. David Reich, the world's foremost technical expert on ancient human population genomics, has a very wave-making hypothesis about the origin of Neanderthals and does not use any Linnaean taxonomy in the paper at all.

What is under debate is the real structure of the ancestry, and we need lots more data for any kind of strong consensus to exist among responsible researchers a very detailed structure. The species debate however is annoyingly alive and well in non-experts, which is why I wrote the massive paragraphs in the topics below trying to explain why its not relevant. If someone just suggested changing the name from H. neanderthalensis to H. sapiens neanderthalensis, what does that actually tell us about the tree structure? Nothing: because we compute the trees from objective data. That's why its not what is actually under debate. Migratory paths are under debate. Who invented Levallois is under debate. What population gave Neanderthals the 6% modern ancestry they already had when our ancestors encountered them 40-50kya is under debate. etc. I simply do not see papers from experts working on Neanderthals where they put time into this abandoned paradigm of defining tree structures by Latin names. People suggest new tree structures literally all the time, and they almost never have Linnaean taxonomy in them. Dunkleosteus77 this lack of focus on Linnaean taxonomy in virtually all recent papers even when they include detailed population structure analysis and phylogenetic tree arguments may be the more convincing basis for my argument as to what the working researchers actually think on this topic.

other WP articles on hominids Minor point: "hominids" = family Hominidae, aka all great apes. You are probably thinking of hominins, or most accurately "humans" (genus Homo). In the literature on this topic we denote our own populations as "[anatomically] modern humans" when differentiatied them with the archaics (Neanderthals, Denisovans, late erectus, naledi, florisiensis, etc.). But again this is mostly just shorthand by researchers to other researchers who have a solid and shared understanding of the groups being discussed. Mausfield (talk) 14:17, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

I urge you to be careful on Wikipedia of enforcing your personal academic opinion especially on this broad of a topic. I am very well aware of the shying away of actual binomial names in specifically human evolution in the last few decades (I've tried with little success to explain this to other major editors in WP:PALEO), but also as of yet I haven't read any paper that argues against getting rid of binomials/trinomials/quadrinomials so Wikipedia can't just drop them entirely. I ran into this problem on Homo erectus and Peking Man and other fossils in this species if you can call it that, which is the issue of when did this practice stop and according to who if these names are still in use and have an extremely long history of use Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 03:11, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Peer review

Neanderthal

Previous peer review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I've listed this article for peer review because of planning for its pre-FAC preparations. Extending invitations to some of the top editors listed for this page including: UtherSRG, Dunkleosteus77, Chris Capoccia, and Dudley Miles. All editors with an interest in this subject are also invited to participate.

Thanks, ErnestKrause (talk) 07:30, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

Please ping me once you have fixed stuff already mentioned and if/when you need more comments Chidgk1 (talk) 11:20, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi Chidgk1; Thanks for offering to look at the article. I've just started adding the comments below from Noleander into the article which may take a week or two to fully incorporate. Feel free to start in the article as soon as is workable for you since I'm trying to be careful in doing a full assessment of all of the comments being offered here. Cheers. ErnestKrause (talk) 12:11, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

I am interested in this as well. This is my academic area, but I'm no expert on MOS stuff, what would be the best way for me to contribute?

Also, I can also snap a good pic of the Neanderthal skeleton at the Max Planck EVA in Leipzig if you think it might be better than the current one. Alternatively I think we should consider one of the Kennis brothers' reconstructions as the infobox pic, there is a reason paleoanthro institutes around the world have paid for those commissions, putting flesh on bone really gets across how similar the two populations were and is a good hedge against the pervasive "ape caveman" mindset. Mausfield (talk) 02:00, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

Noleander

• An exciting topic! Congrats to the nominator and other contributors listed above.

• At first glance, it looks to be in great shape for FAC. I'll try to find some suggestions for improvement.

• Prose, overall, is professional and engaging.

• Parenthetical phrase confusing Neanderthals can be classified as a unique species as H. neanderthalensis, though some authors argue expanding the definition of H. sapiens to include other ancient humans, with combinations such as H. sapiens neanderthalensis (splitters and lumpers). I'm guessing splitters & lumpers refer to the two groups of researchers named in the preceding parts of the sentence. But as written, some readers may think it applies only to the closest group (the "to include other ancient humans" group). Consider clarifying by e.g. moving "lumpers and splitters" into an efn footnote; or adding more words to make the connections clearer.

• Good point. Removing noncontextual general term from technical discussion. Discussion of speciation should follow technical citations used in this paragraph. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:06, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

You may not even want to broach this topic at all. It is mostly a controversy outside people who actually work on Neanderthals and human evolutionary genetics, who generally do not care and widely get that "species" is a fuzzy term on purpose. We rely on objective measures of divergence, ie genomics. The Neanderthals that admixed with humans ~40k (ie Vindija) already had ~6% of their ancestry from an older, extinct sapiens migration into Eurasia c.250+kya, so the strict biological species definition is already out of the question by more than one event. Introducing this here is going to feel incomplete unless we give a lot of space to it, and then we've just repeated the species definition debate in an article that derives no benefit from it. Mausfield (talk) 02:08, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

@Mausfield - When you say "You may not even want to broach this topic at all is that referring to (a) explaining "splitter vs lumper" terminology? or (b) discussing if Neanderthal is a species (or not)?

Regarding (a): In my assessment, as a layman, it would be fine if the article did not mention "lumpers and splitters" at all.

Regarding (b): 100% of lay readers will want the article to address the question of whether Neanderthals are either:

1. A species in their own right
2. A subspecies of Homo Sapiens
3. Some other status
4. Uncertain and currently being debated

The article doesn't need to go into detail on the options; and it doesn't need to draw any conclusions. But being silent on the possibilities will not pass muster at FAC. Noleander (talk) 02:58, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

Hatting off-topic forum discussion

(a) Agreed, it is not even the correct usage of the phrase in this situation because we have objective measures of relatedness (ie genomes). "Splitters vs lumpers" proper is when you don't have genomes (ie paleontology) so you have to rely on morphology and come to a consensus on how much morphological variation you allow in, say, a molar crown height or brow ridge before you guess that two fossils were actually from separate populations because sustained gene flow would not allow their skeletons to diverge that much, ie they were reproductively isolated for some arbitary threshold of time. This is quite different from the semantic debate of how much variation should one species encapsulate. The former is a real situation for biologists because its the only systematic way to attempt a phylogeny of extinct lineages too old for genomics, the latter we basically do not care about.

Ex: a paleontologists looks at three dinosaur skeletons with snouts of 1, 1.2, and 2.8 meters long. She says, well, I'm okay with a estimating that a natural popuation of animals this size could maintain standing trait variation of up to 0.3% in snout length based on what I understand of the paleobiology here, so I'll estimate the first two are from the same species under the assumption they were part part of a regularly interbreeding population which kept their snouts from diverging too much. The variance between the 2.8 is more than twice the variance in the first group, so likely this individual was not from a lineage regularly reproducing with the 1/1.2 lineage.

Ex: a philosopher of biology or taxonomist defines that all three are the same species because semantically the term "species" should include that amount of variation.

Hopefully that illustrates the differences. The former is real, and does not apply to Neanderthals because we have objective measure of relatedness. The closest version of this which is actually a current debate is: what do we call the ancestral group of us and the N-D ancestor? Superarchaic/basal Homo sapiens or Homo heidelbergensis are the major candidates, with a sizable group considering heidelbergensis to be an ecotype of European erectus. The latter is a good example of a splitter vs lumper situation because its too old for DNA, meaning you decide whether heidelbergensis is its own thing based on how much variation in brow ridge, etc, you are willing to believe could be maintained in one population of interbreding lineages.

So we have a tricky issue of whether we misconstrue the situation as a debate among evolutionary anthropologists in order to sustain the oversimplified understanding of "species" for a typical reader, because I 100% agree with you that many readers will have heard this from science communicators and the like. But the simple fact is that it is a largely philosophical and semantic debate, and totally irrelevant from the actual evolutionary history, and phlogeny is an objective question. At no point in any genomic or phylogenetic analysis is there a parameter called "species". We only deal with populations, which is to say groups of individuals in which reproduction is prevalent and sustained over evolutionary time.

But being silent on the possibilities will not pass muster at FAC.

That can be a true statement, and it can also be true that the people at FAC are simply wrong about what evolutionary anthropologists care about.

I think the best way to do this would be to contextualize it as a historical debate, similar examples exist on Evolution: things which were debates and were not really "decided" on, but rather simply ceased to be sensible as the field progressed in general. We can reference some papers or textbooks which look at the history of this question before modern evolutionary biology and genomics was applied to it. It was at one point a big question of whether Neanderthals were an early offbranch of modern humans or perhaps ancestral to us, so that is relevant because its a debate about the objective structure of the tree. Whether two branches have enough genetic distance from each other to call them distinct species is a philosophical question, then as it is now.

And we can state that modern researchers use population genomics to objectively analyze ancestry and relatedness, thus genomes and not the terminology for specimens is used to build phylogenetic trees, meaning only the semantic/philosophical debate really remains. Mausfield (talk) 21:29, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

@ErnestKrause: - I cannot comprehend what Mausfield is saying above, although I'm sure they are trying to help with the article, in their own way.

If you nominate this article at FAC and it is silent about whether Neanderthal is a species, subspecies, or whatever – the nomination will fail, 100% guaranteed. Or – more realisitically – multiple reviewers will oppose and you will frantically rush to remedy the article, but the damage will have been done, and additional reviewers will avoid posting reviews.

The material can be a simple as "The taxonomic status of Neanderthals as a species or subpecies is uncertain. It is a matter of active scientific discussion, and various proposals have been offered." (This green text exemplar is presented solely to give an example of a minimal statement if sources describe an uncertain taxonomic situation. I have not read the sources and am not a biologist.) Noleander (talk) 21:55, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

It is really not a matter of active scientific discussion. I was saying if this is a topic we expect readers will really want to see discussed a bit (which I agree is a reasonable assumption) we can talk about how it used to be a big debate and fizzles out in importance when DNA came onto the scene.

I apologize for the wall of text, its a question that is based on misunderstood premises and I was trying to explain why it is not really a current debate like pop science communicators think it is. Mausfield (talk) 22:06, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

I would say we have to be careful using terms like "objective measures" in reference to taxonomy because at the end of the day the issue becomes how different is different enough? I mean this issue of "lumpers and splitters" is most visible in human taxonomy because this issue of when are you longer a person is of course very loaded. That's why this issue of lumper and splitters and the species problem takes a centerfocus in the Taxonomy section. I mean, if the question were settled then we wouldn't see studies today variably using H. neanderthalensis or H. s. neanderthalensis and I will say the former is more popular in academia at least, the latter I think (personal opinion here) is more popular in pop science or where the audience is non-academics. Or in other words, this is the species problem and it's not a problem that Wikipedia will settle Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I am not using objective measures of taxonomy. I'm saying Linnaean taxonomy is irrelevant and nonsensical because we have objective measures of inheritance: DNA. Linnaean taxonomy categorically fails if lineages every do anything but split. We of course know that this is nonsense, atomically speaking all sexual lineages by definition are the fusion of two lineages, and species can accumulate sizable divergence in time and genetics and sometimes jump this gap. A sensible person just picks a name that seems sensible and has recogniition. In Neanderthals, Linnaean taxonomy has zero relevance in the determination of the tree structures, because that is done with genetics. It's relevant only for common language and recognition, which is why King's name stuck.

DNA tells you mathematically how diverged populations are, and that's all we care about. Species are a thing that was invented before genetics, it is a proxy for inheritance by naming nodes and hoping they stay diverged, hence the problem. But that "problem" isn't something you can resolve, it is just abandoned and you now use cladistics. We keep the naming because its convenient, but in systematics really the practical definition of a species is the reference gene pool and the general consensus of the people who work in those taxa and know what the vibe of divergence is like in that neighborhood.

I simply do not see any trace of the classical species debate among people working on populations properly defined as Neanderthals. David Reich's big 2026 paper is the most out of the box approach to this phylogeny in the last decade and he doesn't use "sapiens" or "neanderthalensis" once in the entire paper. It just got updated yesterday, give it a look . I keep waiting to see contemporary papers from experts whose focus is Neanderthals and archaic human genetics, which actually delve into Linnaean taxonomy, but I have yet to see them from anyone. Mausfield (talk) 02:46, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

ErnestKrause

From "Renewing Linnaean taxonomy: a proposal to restructure the highest levels of the Natural System", van der Gulik et al 2022 (including Dave Speijer who is a major eukaryote large scale ToL cladistics guy) :

The above summary indicates that major researchers, representing different fields of biological scientific endeavour, have proposed the abandoning of core tenets of the Natural System as introduced by Linnaeus. Below we review the main arguments that form the basis of these proposals and indicate a way forward by addressing these concerns in a manner that retains the value of an updated Linnaean Natural System.

From "Linnaean Ranks: Vestiges of a Bygone Era" 2022, a famous philosophy of systematics guy (Marc Ereshefsky) rather than molecularists :

Abstract: We tend to think that there are different types of biological taxa: some taxa are species, others are genera, while others are families. Linnaeus gave us his ranks in 1731. Biological theory has changed since Linnaeus's time. Nevertheless, the vast majority of biologists still assign Linnaean ranks to taxa, even though that practice is at odds with evolutionary theory and even though it causes a number of practical problems. The Linnaean ranks should be abandoned and alternative methods for displaying the hierarchical relations of taxa should be adopted.

So, like I've said, we assign taxonomies to things out of legacy. Out of the 20+ of Neanderthal-focused scientific articles I've posted in this Talk page, I don't think a single one uses Homo neanderthalensis or any Linnaean taxonomy at all, much less instigates a position on it. So, if you really want a bunch of discussion about the "taxonomy" being under debate by working researchers, just do so knowing that statement is false and misleading. Mausfield (talk) 22:40, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

• Another parenthetical phrase that could be confusing: ... were described as "progressive" Neanderthals which would evolve into some local subspecies of H. sapiens (polycentricism)... A lay reader won't know why that word is in parenthesis. Maybe use efn footnote? or add more words: " ... a process known as polycentricism ..." etc.

• Changing the wording to identify the contextual debate. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:19, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

• Alt text missing from some images e.g. File:Guide_leaflet_(1901)_(14767192135).jpg

• Alt image text added throughout the article. ErnestKrause (talk) 00:31, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

• Quotes for defining words .. while the "classic" Neanderthals of the ... MOS:WORDSASWORDS and MOS:TECHNICAL permit quotes or italics when first defining/introducting a word/phrase, which is the case here. But later in the article is ... give way to "classic" or "late Neanderthals" by the ... and I believe the quotes around "classic" there is not approved. I think the MOS doesnt want quotes carried through (on the same word) as it is used again later in the article.

• 'Late Neaderthals' covers this period and can be applied to the entire latter half of the evolutionary span of Neanderthals following their extinction. Archiving the use of the some of the optional quotation marks used here. ErnestKrause (talk) 12:24, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

It's because even academic studies which discuss these terms put "classic" in quotes as well, it's a historical term and even historically it was put in quotes not unoften Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:13, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

and can be applied to the entire latter half of the evolutionary span of Neanderthals following their extinction I am guessing you mean "before" their extinction, but this is still not accurate. Late Neanderthals are a genomically defined group and originated c. 65kya preceding a large population turnover event. They are genomically represented by Vindija, Goyet, Feldhofer, Mez 2 (not 1), etc. Can I ask where you got this definition? I asked ChatGPT the question out of curiosity, and got the same thing, and I'm concerned if that's where you got it from. Chatbots are highly inaccurate on this topic. Mausfield (talk) 17:19, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the distinction between "early Neanderthals" and "late Neanderthals" as it appears in the current version of the article is, in and of itself, objectionable. It follows the RS in the article from Ruebens and Hubner. I'm not sure that these RS are, on their own, objectionable. If you have improved wording, then try to express it in the time-tested format at Wikipedia for suggesting improvements to articles. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:18, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

• Quotes for insults/slurs? The "caveman" archetype often mocks Neanderthals and depicts them as primitive, hunchbacked, knuckle-dragging, club-wielding, grunting, nonsocial characters driven solely by animal instinct. "Neanderthal" can also be used as an insult... The MOS does not permit quotes to be used for slurs or insults, I believe. The guidance in MOS:QUOTEPOV is relevant:

• Acceptable: Siskel and Ebert called the film "unforgettable".
• Unacceptable: The site is considered "sacred" by the religion's scriptures.

Insight may also come from the guidance near MOS:RETAINQUOTEVARIETY which says to avoid scare quotes (in a similar context, but not identical):

• Acceptable: The animal is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
• Unacceptable: The animal is listed as "Endangered" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

I'm not aware of any article on insults or slurs that puts the words in quotes (except perhaps the first time the word is introduced/defined).

• I'm identifying it as the informal or vernacular form of reference. It should be more clear now. ErnestKrause (talk) 12:32, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

• Capitalization style of source titles: some are sentence case, some title case. Should pick one style and use for all source titles. I can never remember what MOS guideline says that, but it does say it somewhere :-) Ignore how sources capitalize their own titles. Looks like most are currently sentence case, but a few are title case.

• Using sentence format in prose lower case. The article should all be consistent now. ErnestKrause (talk) 21:26, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

• Locator map for "Neander" original location? The article has two maps: can an icon be placed on one of them at the original site that gave N. its name? Many readers would find that interesting and useful.

• All Wikipedia has on this is in the article for Neandertal (valley) ; is there something there which is useful? ErnestKrause (talk) 21:35, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

@ErnestKrause - The article got me all excited about that location:

• "In 1856, local schoolteacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott recognised bones from Kleine Feldhofer Grotte in Neander Valley — Neanderthal 1 ... "
• "The first recognised Neanderthal fossil, Neanderthal 1, was discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley, Germany."
• "Neanderthals are named after the Neander Valley in which the first identified specimen was found. "
• "The vernacular name of the species in German is always Neandertaler ("inhabitant of the Neander Valley"), whereas Neandertal always refers to the valley"
• "Skullcap of Neanderthal 1, the type specimen, at the Musée de l'Homme, Paris..."
• "Neanderthal 1, the type specimen ... "

So when I saw some maps in the article, I was hoping to see where that valley is in the world. I was sadly disappointed :-( I suspect other readers will also be curious. Noleander (talk) 21:42, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

• Hi Noleander; Very useful comments which will likely take me another day or two to get through them all. I'm fairly sure you can find the image and map you are looking for in the Infobox here: Neandertal (valley). If you've the time, then you can bring it into the article here in some suitable format as you see best. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:30, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

  For @Noleander as well: it should be easy enough to make a map with all currently known Neanderthal sites labeled. Would that be beneficial? Mausfield (talk) 21:31, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

• Hi Mausfield; you and any other editor is invited to start a separate thread below for your own comments just like Noleander did for his comments in his thread. It would be useful if you could start to also enumerate your comments in order for other editors to address your comments one-by-one. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:33, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

• Data in images needs to have a source. E.g. image File:Neanderthal cranial anatomy.jpg has lots of data: the size and shape of the skull; skull features ("large gaps", "little or no chin", etc); etc. The image page in Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neanderthal_cranial_anatomy.jpg needs to have source identified. Customarily, that is done by simply placing the URL of the academic WP:RS (e.g. of the skull size & shape & features) into the "Description" section of the Commons page. Sources are only required for images that convey factual data. Sources are not required for decorative images, or images where the facts are repeated (and cited) in the WP article body text.

• Also the map of glacial extent File:Weichsel-Würm-Glaciation.png - URL of data source is dead?

• Also map with green dots: File:Europe relief laea location map.jpg - Those dots are not in the Commons map, so they are overlaid in the template {{Neanderthal map}}, I guess? The WP:RS that contains the lat/long of all those green dots should probably be cited as a footnote in the caption. Readers should not be expaected to go down inside {{Neanderthal map}} template. Unless I'm totally wrong about where the lat/long data is stored :-)

Yes I made that template like 6 years ago, my logic is like any image the references don't have to be in this article. Like if it were a range map, then the reference could be on the Commons, same idea here Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:13, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

• Image File:Neanderthal genetic subgroups.png does it ideally: the URL of the data source is in the Commons page, and also in a citation in the image caption.

• If the "Range" section contains images on both Left & right sides, readers may see "sandwiching" on some devices. Consider putting both on R side when have 2 or more images sorta close together in the same section.

• Large caption in Sidebar An approximate reconstruction of a Neanderthal skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History. The central rib-cage (including the sternum) and parts of the pelvis are from modern humans. I applaud the desire to disclose inaccuracies (rife within paleontolgy) to the reader. But in this very prominent sidebar, it looks a bit verbose. Can some of that text be put into an efn explanatory footnote?

• Footnote is a bit distracting, can it be removed? .. wrote that they were "incapable of moral and [theistic] conceptions". Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Original_wording says "Insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically). If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with [sic]" The original "theositic" error seems rather minor, so consider omitting the efn footnote entirely.

• Footnote is now abridged and trimmed; should be better now. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:33, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

• That's all I got. A really enjoyable article! I look forward to seeing it at FAC. Noleander (talk) 14:10, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

• Hi Noleander; Those are very useful comments. It might be of interest for you to glance at the closing comments on taxonomies which was added by another editor toward the end of the Chimpanzee FAC; the taxonomies in this article will need to be adapted to the cladistic form of the taxonomy rather than the Linnean form. I've done more than half of your comments above and there's more on the way. Did you look at the pinpoint map on the Neandertal (valley) article which I thought you might like. The general approach is that this Neanderthal article needs to be adjusted into the form and quality of the Chimpanzee article which was just promoted to FA. More to come. I'm also inviting Mausfield to start a separate thread below for his comments and suggestions for other editors to comment upon separately. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:33, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

  Sounds good. Since this is only a Peer Review, not a FAC nomination, you shouldn't feel obligated to post notes here as you process my suggestions. All my thoughts above are simply ideas that are aimed at making your FAC nomination go smoothly and end up with promotion. If you have a specific issue you want my input on, feel free to ping me. It is an exciting topic, and I look forward to seeing it at FAC ! Noleander (talk) 22:40, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

• @ErnestKrause: - Another issue: terminology "human" here: "Neanderthals Homo neanderthalensis or sometimes Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) are an extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited .." Here the word "humans" is wikilinked to homo. I'm not a biologist, but doesn't human only refer to homo sapiens, not the genus homo? Maybe this is just a variation on the discussion above. But I'm confused beause the article human in its 1st sentence says Humans (Homo sapiens.... so there is a disconnect there. You should probably get that all ironed-out before nominating at FAC, because reviewers may pounce on those kinds of inconsistencies. Your goal is to give reviewers nothing to complain about :-) Noleander (talk) 12:30, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

  There is some ambiguity in this topic but in all of the widely held stances, Neanderthals are considered humans. Mausfield (talk) 18:25, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

  @Mausfield - My question was not whether N are humans, it was why is the article linking the word "human" to the article homo when the article human explicitly says the word "human" means "Homo sapiens".

  PS: You add so much confusion into the discussion ... would you please post your comments in a new section in this page? Thanks.Noleander (talk) 18:42, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

  My apologies. You said I'm not a biologist, but doesn't human only refer to homo sapiens, not the genus homo?, so I figured you wanted an answer. Mausfield (talk) 19:02, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

  When I do peer reviews, I only review PRs where the nominator is planning on article to WP:FAC and they want advice on how to get the article to FA status. Sometimes I phrase my suggestions as a statement, but sometimes I pose the suggestions as a question. When I pose the question, I'm pretending (to the nominator) that I'm a typical reader of the article .. and indicating how a reader (or FAC reviewer) may be confused. I personally don't need an answer (although I can see how a drive-by editor might think I want an answer) .. I'm letting the nominator know that lay readers might. Noleander (talk) 19:16, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

  Partially this was so ErnestKrause could see an answer right there if your comments invovled like scientific questions rather than just MOS stuff. But, you've quite made your point. I've added a section below and restricted it to the science. Mausfield (talk) 21:46, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

It depends on how you want to use the word "human". Consider the word "lion", out of any context you'd think Panthera leo but consider Panthera atrox the "American lion" or Panthera spelaea the "cave lion", or even the mountain lion, and it's not like the word "lion" in any of these instances was necessarily misused Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

• @ErnestKrause: - I see the article uses the phrase "modern human" a lot ... but I do not see a link to the article early modern human aka anatomically modern human. That article maybe useful to readers, so it should probably be linked somewhere. (apologies if it is already linked ... I could not find it). Noleander (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

• Hi Noleander; Those are important concerns to address. The issue on taxonomy also came up with RoySmith during the FAC for Chimpanzee when he pointed out difficuties with the FA for Primate in comparison to the new FA for Chimpanzee here: . Basically, he is correct that the Primate article uses old taxonomy standards, while the Chimpanzee article uses the updated taxonomy standards. The issues you bring up for Neanderthal here are accurate and need to be addressed fully; also the subsection on Interbreeding needs likely to have some attention in this context since Neanderthals were capable of interbreeding. Separately, you've largely convinced me that transferring the pinpoint map from the Neaderthal (valley) article is worthwhile, and I'll support you if you have the energy to bring it into the article here since its useful to the article. Its good to see Mausfield starting his own separate thread below in four principle points which I'll try to answer below in his section; you might have some added comments there if you have time for the cross-reading of his thread below. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:38, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

I mean modern human would be better linked to human than early modern human since this latter term is very vague. And this other phrase "anatomically modern human" is more used to partition "behaviorally modern human" which is in itself a contentious matter because it assumes that Neanderthals could not be behaviorally modern as it would be a modern human innovation if we have to draw the line at this level Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Early modern human is not vague. It refers to morphology that is diverged from the archaic lineage but basal in the modern linage. "Modern" is not a time-based adjective here. los Huesos is early archaic human, for an analogy. Mausfield (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

References

Mausfield

• There are many statements here about Neanderthals which are very technical and very hypothetical, i.e. not currently supported one way or another by evidence. In general I strongly feel these should be left out entirely on the basis of not being encyclopedic (yet). A typical reader will not be prepared to properly judge the merits of each position or how speculative they are. And, it will worsen the widespread issue of speculative positions in human evolution being lifted and alchemically transformed into clickbait "Did you know?" facts throughout social media, with this article as the source.

• Scientific accuracy: there is a ton on this article that is either outdated or was never properly supported by the supplied refs in the first place. One example is the "small population/inbreeding/genetic load" stuff. This was never an empirically supported position, it was a hypothesis put forward by some people, and as soon as we started looking at it objectively, it became unsupported (most recently a very big paper in June of this year from Mateja Hajdinjak's group at the Max Planck EVA in Leipzig). So, I am working through these, but I am not sure if you want me to list all of them here. If someone takes issue with their content, you are welcome to mention here and I can explain further if needed, or we can compromise if you feel it breaches the scope of the article. I will a few major ones here:

1. Taxonomy, naming, "species" debate, etc: these are not really a concern of anthropologists who work on Neanderthals, because we have genetics which tell us objectively how related two individuals/populations are. So, whether you want to classify Neanderthals as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens is entirely unrelated to anything about them as organisms and populations. It is definitely relevant to sections here about the history of thought on Neanderthals, but I would not state in
2. Cladistics: the cladogram currently in Classification is from the 2021 Ni et al paper (with Chris Stringer) and has extremely poor support in the field, some go as far as considering it is pressure from the CCP because the they want their own human species. I would not include that cladogram under any circumstances, not least of which because it fully conflicts with objective genetics data. This is a great example of hugely speculative, non-encyclopedic stances being included.
3. Inbreeding depression/genetic load stuff: I have already removed most of this. Possibly could be included in the history of thought on Neanderthals as a popular and now unsupported position.
4. Language: I would remove any statement of a position on this topic. The simple fact is we have no idea what Neanderthal language capacity was and no really clear way to approach that question objectively. The FOXP2 language thing is two discrete layers of speculation: first that human-specific SNPs in FOXP2 are independently related to language capacity and underwent strong selective sweep based on that relationship. We know the sweep is false, as Vindija N carry these alleles. There was a suspicion they got it from us, but Altai has them as well, meaning these SNPs were around at the divergence over 800kya. Perfect example of a debate where the technicality makes it way too much to delve into. (signing for User:Mausfield; Thursday, Oct 8, 2026).

• Hi Mausfield; Good to hear from you in this thread. I'm placing a large emphasis on wanting to get the taxonomy issue settled, and also to give adequate attention to the Interbreeding issue at the bottom of the article which doesn't seem to get all the attention which the topic deserves. Speciation questions are often influenced by whether reproduction is possible within taxonomies or not. Chimpanzees and homo sapiens have no interbreeding largely because of chromosomes not being in conformity. Interbreeding between Neanderthals and homo sapiens was fully possible, which adds these concerns to taxonomy distinctions. Possibly you have some thoughts on the relevance of interbreeding in this article and its related issues of taxonomy. See, for example, the RoySmith comments here: . More later on your four points enumerated above. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:51, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

I'd say you're giving too much credence to reproduction when X-chromosomal hybrid incompatibility is still on the table, and also more to the point it's not like different species alive today can't produce viable offspring anyway. Consider polar bears and grizzly bears which are considered separate species but can produce fully viable offspring. Like per the mtDNA of the Grizzly bear population of the Alexander Archipelago almost entirely descends from polar bear introgression. Like the ability to produce viable offspring is not how species are delineated today, much less in the fossil record Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:55, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Quick note: please use admixture instead of interbreeding.

Regarding taxonomy: There is a bit of confusion here regarding taxonomy vs modern cladistics. You have to understand both of those concepts to get why the Linnean taxonomy debate is not a thing among people who work on Neanderthals. Since day 1 it has been super popular to suggest new and flashy nomenclatures and then follow up with some imagined biology and often eugenics, note the 30+ names proposed for Neanderthals which are basically fully synonymous, meaning they are meaningless distinctions with regards to actual phylogeny. That is *very* relevant to the history of our understanding of Neanderthals, but it is not a debate that was "settled", it was an entire way of thinking that simply ceased to be relevant once we gained a quantitative way to understand populations and relatedness. If you're saying FAC will outright reject unless we maintain a popular misconception of how biologists and anthropologists currently think about Neanderthals as a species, I don't know how to navigate that. In that case I'd say just give it a boilerplate "up for date", which would be a real shame as Neanderthals (especially Neanderthal 1) are deeply involved in the history of biological anthropology.

If you want to understand the relationship of the populations we commonly call modern humans and Neanderthals, you look at genomes. When I do a phylogenetic analysis I have no way to use the Linnean species concept. It has no numbers in it, not even a threshold of relatedness at wide consensuis (for an example of something that does, see 16S phylogenies, and the resulting OTUs and ASVs). We have cluster numbers (denoted as the variable K which you've probably seen in STRUCTURE/ADMIXTURE plots) but this is not a species, its an arbitrary cutoff to define clusters when performing neighbor-joining. If you want a one-liner: Species are not real, populations are real, and we define populations through genetics.

This is what I would include regarding taxonomy, and I fold the "Scientific history" thing into because they are really the same topic. Apologies on the refs stopping halfway down, I wanted to just get the scaffold down and see how you feel about it first:

Since the mid-19th century, fossil specimens now understood to be archaic humans have been generally recognized as having some close relationship to modern humans. In the initial 1864 publication classifying the Neanderthal 1 specimen, King stated:

It has long been known that human bones, belonging to an extinct race, and occurring in stalagmite along with the remains of the mammoth and other fossil animals, have been found in the limestone fissures or caverns of the lofty precipices which overhang the river Meuse, in Belgium, about seventy English miles south-west of the Neanderthal [valley]. (King 88)

The first researcher to examine Neanderthal 1 after its discovery in 1857 was the German anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen, who published his findings the following year, but had also published an earlier article in 1853 with similar hypotheses on the context of archaic human remains in Europe. Schaaffhausen suggested Neanderthal 1 was of an extinct human race at base of "the transition from barbarous to civilized man", and associated them a period prior to the diluvium (the then-scientific term for Noah's flood):

The conclusions at which I arrived were:—1st. That the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin writers; and which were encountered as autochthones by the German immigrants. (Schaaffhausen 453, wikisource (not sure if we can link this), translated by George Busk in 1861)

Since then, an extremely wide range of binomial nomenclatures have been suggested for these specimens, including at least 30 in mainstream academic journals for specimens now classified as Neanderthals. Most of these are taxonomic synonyms, meaning they present alternative names (i.e. they remain in the genus Homo) and not alternative tree structures. This general way of thinking about populations and phylogeny based on physical characteristics is known as Linnaean taxonomy, named after the 18th-century Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus who introduced it.

Well into the 20th century, examples of Neanderthal Linnaean taxonomy were often in context of scientific racism, attempting to fit Neanderthals into various pseudoscientific historical race concepts which organized modern humans into racial hierarchies. Due to the clear association of Neanderthals with Europe, some of these contexts idealized Neanderthals in those hierarchies. The anthropologist Carleton S. Coon's 1939 book The Races of Europe defined a modern Caucasian race as derived from "Mediterranean" Homo sapiens and European Neanderthals, distinct from Sub-Saharan African populations. Neanderthal remains recovered from Coon's excavations in Iran led him to suggest Neanderthals had advanced cultural practices, including agriculture. In contrast, other figures emphasized a supposed ape-like nature of Neanderthals, associated them with purportedly inferior races. An early champion of Darwinism and close associate of Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley (along with King himself) placed Neanderthals low on racial hierarchies, associating Neanderthals with colonized populations in the 19th century based on speculations on the intelligence and enculturation of both groups. Often these categorizations involved phrenology and other pseudoscientific anthropometrics. The German naturalist Ernst Haeckel classified Neanderthal 1 as Homo stupidus, under similar rationale. In 1863, Huxley specifically related Neanderthal 1 to Aboriginal Australians:

“[Neanderthal 1] is particularly interesting, as it suggests that, notwithstanding the flattened condition of the occiput, the posterior cerebral lobes must have projected considerably beyond the cerebellum, and as it constitutes one among several points of similarity between the Neanderthal cranium and certain Australian skulls. (Huxley 165)

This broad and often chaotic debate (which became known as "the species problem") was not limited to Neanderthals, and existing broadly in taxonomy in general. As far back as 1856, Darwin lamented in On the Origin of Species the lack of clarity in the concept, noting "how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties" (Darwin 45). Rather than a clear winner arising, developments in biology such as modern synthesis, population genetics, and the molecular revolution redefined how evolutionary relationships and heredity are understood and–more importantly–measured. These developments largely made debates of Linnaean taxonomy in living or recent species moot, as innovations in molecular biology such as DNA sequencing began providing researchers with objective methods to define and compare relatedness using genetics, a standard approach now known as cladistics. Phylogenetic analysis through cladistics has expanded greatly in capacity and replaced Linnaean taxonomy as a method of building evolutionary relationships when molecular data such as DNA or proteomics are avaible. For example, the number of nucleotide differences in two related DNA sequences multiplied by the expected mutations per generation provides the estimated number of generations since the most recent common ancestor (i.e., since the two sequences were identical or coalesced), a technique known as the molecular clock. If a confident estimate of generation time is know, an absolute time to most recent common ancestor (or TMRCA) can be estimated. This technique is foundational to the modern study of ancestry and evolution, including in modern humans and Neanderthals as well as admixture between the two.

Thus, similar to the general abandonment of the absolute biological definition of species (where a species is strictly defined as the widest group of indivuduals produce viable offspring), focus on the Linnaean taxonomy of Neanderthals have fallen out of mainstream scientific interest to researchers working on Neanderthals. Instead, researchers mathematically compute the structure of modern and archaic human evolutionary trees using phylogenetics software to analyze the number and organization of differences in available genomes. Sometimes, these differences cluster or are absent in ways other than what random mating and Mendellian inheritance would predict, which provides clues to researchers that evolutionary processes affecting genetic variation (such as natural selection or gene flow from migration) may have occured on these DNA regions in the past. Differences which are shared by some groups but absent another (termed an outgroup) generally mean that the former groups are more closely related to each other than any are to the latter. The maternal- and paternal-specific inheritance of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA respectively can also provide researchers with estimates of sex biases in hybrid incompatibility or migration, i.e. the difference in viability of a hybrid with a Neanderthal father and modern human mother or vice versa. Methods like these are largely what construct the multiple currently plausible evolutionary trees including modern and humans and Neanderthals.

Of all the suggested nomenclatures for Neanderthals since the 1850s, King's original Homo neanderthalensis enjoys very broad consensus purely on the basis of historical precedent. Non-synonymous taxonomies requiring tree structures incompatible with population genomics data (such as modern humans descent from Neanderthals) have likewise been abandoned. The only alternative with at least a small amount of mainstream support since the 1970s is Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, which can also be resolved as synonymous if the 500-765ka ancestral population of the modern human and the archaic branches (i.e. Neanderthals and Denisovans) is denoted Homo sapiens and modern humans Homo sapiens sapiens. The latter (H. s. sapiens) is already widely supported, and the former enjoys some support with the alternative "archaic Homo sapiens" sometimes used as a qualitative descriptor. H. s. neanderthalensis conflicts with the classification of Denisovans as Homo longi, which already has a notable lack of support for archaeological reasons. A potentially long-term stable hybrid zone clouds the divergence of the modern human and Neanderthal lineages, and anatomically well-defined Neanderthals are documented at least 200ka prior the current consensus on the origin of Homo sapiens sapiens c. 320ka, both making it poorly defined as to how this "sister subspecies" perspective fits with existing evidence.

Regardless, while alternative taxonomies may recategorize modern humans and Neanderthals as sister subspecies rather than sister species (or other relationships), they do not add anything empirical to the current understanding of the actual relatedness and history of admixture between those groups, as these are objectively determined by genetic analysis.

Mausfield (talk) 18:26, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

• That's a large amount of material, including your previous statements about language origins. Regarding your comments on Admixture as opposed to Interbreeding, then Wikipedia appears to have different article highlighting different aspects of these related issues. As you are aware Interbreeding as a topic is already represented in the article titles Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans (which you've just listed for renaming), along with its links to the Wikipedia sibling articles related to Hybrid (biology), Hybrid speciation, Eukaryote hybrid genome, and Reproductive isolation. That's a wide range of articles and opinions on this subject. The well-received 2023 book title Cro-Magnon by Trent Holiday which deals significantly with Neaderthals seems to prefer reference to Interbreeding to references to Admixture by a factor of about two-to-one. Its not clear which direction you feel best covers all these articles at Wikipedia.

Regarding your previous comment about your apparently critical view of discussing Language in the context of Neanderthals, then you appear to know that this topic is highly divided in the field. Your 'solution' of suggesting that this topic be elided on Wikipedia seems different from how Wikipedia in general deals with divided scholarly opinion when both sides are represented by RS. Usually, Wikipedia would simply state that opinion is divided among scholars and then give representative RS for each side of the argument. Your suggestion to elide this debate seems to not follow Wikipedia's approach to this type of situation involving divided scholarly opinion.

Your comments on progress on Genomics and Proteomics in the study of Neaderthals is apt. And its relation to cladistics would be useful to expand in this article with RS. See the comments from Dunkleosteus77 previously on using Paabo and others on this issue. ErnestKrause (talk) 01:00, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

I have not read Trenton Holliday's book but I would hesitate to choose terminology A) based on a pop science book and B) based on a single book anyways. Holliday is a legitimate paleoanthropologist and I'm not saying his work in general is not valid for inclusion. Please reference my renaming rationale for Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans, as I'm very specific about why. Interbreeding is a term you would use to describe individual events producing a hybrid. At the scale of populations describing the ancestry of those populations, I have never seen the term "interbreding" be used, a la "interbred ancestry", whereas "admixed ancestry" etc are common. It's not that "interbreeding" is a bad or non-scientific term, its the context of use here. For example, if you're talking about Denisova 11 as an individual, it would be appropriate to describe that as "an instance of modern human-Neanderthal interbreeding".

Regarding your previous comment about your apparently critical view of discussing Language in the context of Neanderthals, then you appear to know that this topic is highly divided in the field.

I think you need to first establish that this is actually a hot debate, as I do not agree with taking that for granted. I see this quite a lot on Wikipedia, where people will guess at what the hot topics are in a niche scientific realm, usually based on what they see on internet clickbait. I do not mean to personally criticize you or your familiarity with the topic, I'm only saying that I see it a lot. I spend most days of my week engaging with literature on this topic. From that experience, Neanderthal language is not "highly divided" because it is nowhere close to highly studied. Working researchers need methodologies to test questions. We do not have a method of testing if Neanderthals used language. It's a common topic in pop science because ADMIXTURE plots and migration estimates are not good clickbait. All we are scientifically justified in saying right now about Neanderthal language is something to the effect of:

"It is unknown if Neanderthals used language, and there are no current methods with which to directly test that question. Thus, direct analysis on this question is absent, and indirect study is likewise scant. One research group identified Homo-specific FOXP2 alleles shared by some Neanderthal populations as being linked to language production, under the rationale that FOXP2 mutations are somewhat associated with language and other cognitive deficits in modern humans. Neanderthal anatomy seems generally compatible with the language of modern humans, but language itself is a deep neurological process, developed naturally by humans without any guidance as long as language (including non-spoken language) is environmentally present. The neurological and genetic basis of language is not confidently understood even in living humans, making speculation to Neanderthals scientifically fraught.

If you want my opinion on this: what it will probably look like is a matrix of crossover analysis where you take the relatively few fixed genetic differences between us and Neanderthals and start crossing them off by seeing which ones causally screw with language when mutated in living humans. There is a major blindspot that the genes which directly underly human language may be critical for basic compatibility with life or cognitive function, thus you may never be able to find a relatively intact human mind lacking its normal function. All of the stuff about human language being "required" for Neanderthal cultural artifacts is 100% speculation, not fit for peer-reviewed publicaiton and certainly not for inclusion here as fact. I guess you can include it as a quote from an NPROF source, but I don't like that as a precedent. Homo naledi would be mostly AI pictures of naledis around campires telling stories about their dead cousins' funerals, per Lee Berger. Mausfield (talk) 15:45, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm sort of needing to state that Trenton Holliday's credentials are of a very high order as far as RS go for Wikipedia. His book is published by Columbia University Press and is quite recent from 2023. He does not appear to be 'pandering' to the press for attention, nor does Columbia University generally acknowledge wishing to do so for any of its published scholars. If you are stating that he ought to be discounted as a RS, then that seems to be an uphill argument. I'm thinking that he deals fairly well in both pro and contra terms with the issue of Neanderthals leading to Cro-Magnons in his Chapter 7 titled "Is there such a thing as modern human behavior?" Wikipedia generally requires that if an editor wishes to dismiss a RS, then it needs to be on the basis of another RS or group of RS that speaks in opposition to him. Its not enough to offer an opinion that one Wikipedia editor prefers one set of scholars and that all others are then discounted. Could you try to read this Chapter 7 in Holiday's book to indicate your position based on him being an RS? ErnestKrause (talk) 00:55, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

Umm... what on earth are you talking about? I said Holliday is a legitimate paleoanthropologist and I'm not saying his work in general is not valid for inclusion. Mausfield (talk) 02:16, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

My reference was to your opening comment: "I have not read Trenton Holliday's book but I would hesitate to choose terminology A) based on a pop science book and B) based on a single book anyways." Your first point appears to dismiss his use of terminology as not meeting your standards, and second, that you appear to consider him to be merely 'only' a single source (apart from others who disagree with him?) Both of your comments appear to be negative. If you have no access to his book then you can state that. If you can read Ch 7 of his book, then you will at least have one RS for some of the material you wish to cover above. Wikipedia requires RS for making points; there appears to be a lack of RS in your comments which you have made above. You might find some useful information in Ch 7 of the Holliday book. ErnestKrause (talk) 03:28, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Your first point appears to dismiss his use of terminology as not meeting your standards I very, very explicitly stated interbreeding is absolutely a scientifically appropriate word (it exists in nearly every paper on this topic, sometimes more than admixture by count), just not the typical one for the context we're using, to describe population genetic features as a characteristic of the popuation. When two previously isolated populations meet, you get a genetic signal. If its one-directional, the feature is an introgression and the population is introgressed or admixed. The event as a whole is usually described as admixture, sometimes as interbreeding. Individual instances are sometimes referred to as admixtures, but far more commonly (and accurately) called interbreeding.

Please read my comments more carefully, you are often responding to things I did not actually say and it's a waste of your valuable time.

From https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/genetic-admixture (note that SciDirect has no "Topics" article on "interbreeding":

Genetic admixture refers to the process that occurs when multiple divergent genetic lineages come into gene flow contact and interbreed, resulting in novel allelic combinations that may enhance population fitness and adaptive potential under certain conditions.

From: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article-abstract/278/1702/2/73413/Population-admixture-biological-invasions-and-the

Admixture results from interbreeding between individuals from different populations or species that were previously genetically isolated from each other (Fig. ). Identifying admixture events in the genome is not always a straightforward task, because the genetic signature left behind fades with time as recombination events fragment the genomic segments introduced during the interbreeding event.

SpringerNature Reference series article: https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_675

The phenomenon of interbreeding between the members of two or more different population groups is known as genetic admixture. It results in continued, long-term exchange of genes among the various human society classifications. The admixture process creates linkage disequilibrium between loci in a hybrid population and its magnitude is guided by several factors such as time duration, dynamics, recombination rate, and allele frequency differential in parental populations. Admixture can be estimated reliably from the genetic similarities if the accurate identities of parental populations in the hybrid population are available.

and second, that you appear to consider him to be merely 'only' a single source (apart from others who disagree with him?) He is a single source. I have no idea how you could consider one book to be more than one source. Additionally, I do not know why you are preferring a pop science book when there are hundreds of papers on archaic adxmiture.

You might find some useful information in Ch 7 of the Holliday book This topic is my academic focus, and I'm happy to take your word for his usage of it. I read primary literature on the topic basically every day, including Hollidays, who I will again state is a fully reliable source, I have no disagreement there. I personally like him quite a bit, he is one of the few sensible people in the naledi world right now.

I've picked the most impactful papers on the topic that come to mind. This is not a stricly citation-ordered list, and keep in mind I'm also benefiting your argument by restricting to only Neanderthal-related papers. There are also papers on Denisovans, archaic admixture prior to the advent of aDNA, and pop genetics in general. This was a lot of copy pasting so my apologies if there are linking errors. If you don't have access, all are available on scihub except for a couple of the 2026 ones, which I can link as PDFs if needed.

• Human genetic admixture
• The Complete Genome Sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains
• The Genomic Landscape of Neanderthal Ancestry in Present-Day Humans
• Ancient Gene Flow from Early Modern Humans into Eastern Neanderthals
• Something Old, Something Borrowed: Admixture and Adaptation in Human Evolution
• The Strength of Selection against Neanderthal Introgression
• Origins of Modern Human Ancestry
• A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome
• The Contribution of Neanderthal Introgression to Modern Human Traits
• Archaic Hominin Admixture and Its Consequences for Modern Humans
• Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture
• Neanderthal ancestry through time: insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans
• A refined analysis of Neanderthal-introgressed sequences in modern humans with a complete reference genome (2025).
• Neanderthal adaptive introgression shaped LCT enhancer region diversity without linking to lactase persistence in East Asian populations (2025).
• Archaic introgression and the distribution of shared variation under stabilizing selection (2025).
• Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased (2026, a good example of a scientifically accurate usage of individual-based "interbreeding").
• Genetic diversity of late Neanderthals in northwestern Europe (2026).
• Comparing Neanderthal Introgression Maps Reveals Core Agreement But Substantial Heterogeneity (2026).
• Limited Selection on Neanderthal DNA in 30,780 Recently Admixed Genomes with African-like Ancestry (2026).
• A reference-free method to jointly infer Neanderthal and Denisovan introgressed segments in modern human genomes (2026).

Pinging Genome42 to see if he cares to briefly comment on his usage of each term in his textbooks. Mausfield (talk) 13:44, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

No answer from Genome42 yet, and while waiting for his reply it occurs to me to ask if you could identify what you believe to be the first or second most needed edit to the article at this time to start to enhance it. Pick either your number one or number two suggested edit for enhancing the article, and I'll ask if you could put it into the format of change text "A" into text "B" in the current article, with the best reliable sources to support your suggestion. I'm trying to suggest a constructive way for moving the discussion forward, while waiting for Genome42 to respond to your ping. Is that possible? ErnestKrause (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't agree that you restricting other users to "1 or 2 edits" is constructive at all. Nobody owns this article, you have no more or less right to make any number of edits than I do.

Can you agree that this article being scientifically accurate is more important than the speed at which someone gets another Featured Article badge? Mausfield (talk) 14:28, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

There is still no answer from Genome42 to your ping. While waiting for him to answer, you can list the top one or two edits which you would like to add to the article at this time in the same format which is commonly used by experienced editors at Wikipedia. If you prefer to list your top 3-4 suggested top edits then that's fine also if you have time for it. I've requested you use the format which most experienced Wikipedia editors use for the purpose of discussing their changes to any Wikipedia article. ErnestKrause (talk) 16:11, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Note: In response to your most recent comment in Noleader's section in this peer review, then you appear to have missed the import of his statement that your long commentaries ('wall of text' entries) appear to be 'incomprehensibile' to other editors; similarly, Genome42 appears unresponsive to your pinging him for comment. Wikipedia in not a forum, and you appear to verging in the direction of missing the point of WP:NOTFORUM. The time-tested way at Wikipedia for experienced editors to discuss possible improvements to articles is to state them in the format of changing prose text 'A' into prose text 'B', with suitable RS to make your case. If you continue to miss the point of WP:NOTFORUM, then other editors may start to 'hat' your comments as being off-topic, with no other editors at this time apparently wishing to engage with your very long forum discussions. ErnestKrause (talk) 09:42, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Okay. What is the proper forum to make scientific corrections/review to this article? If an editor contests my suggestion based on their own understanding of the science (including the current archaeology and archaeogenomics), I am going to explain and cite why they are incorrect. Mausfield (talk) 10:43, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back on this. The time-testing way for Talk page suggestions for improvements is in two parts: First, try to specify as directly as possible the problem which you see in the version of the article which you wish to improve. Many editors simply put the material they wish to question into quote marks, and then they give their strongest reason(s) why they believe that version is insufficient. Second, try to specify as unambiguously as possible what you feel the improved version of the problem area just identified should be, usually by putting it into quote marks, as well with the RS which you feel best supports your version of the edit. That is a time-tested way which often gets the attention of others editors who will state their own opinions in their own words or to voice any concerns. For what its worth, the better your RS which you present, then the stronger your suggestion is likely to appear to other editors. ErnestKrause (talk) 16:25, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Got it. In your opinion, regarding scientific accuracy is this article in a state appropriate for a FA? Mausfield (talk) 16:45, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

One of the purposes of listing this article for Peer review is to further enhance and improve the scientific accuracy if possible in this currently GA-article in the Natural sciences. Listing any proposed enhancements you may have in mind in this Peer review in the format which I just listed above is all part of the Peer review process. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:06, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

10.18 onwards

• Clade terminology confusion: The standard encompassing terms today are the "modern" and "archaic" lineages. They are not a timeline of the same lineage, but two separate branches which split ~700-800kya. "Modern humans" = anatomically looks like us. "Modern lineage" = that lineage sister to the archaics. "Superarchaic" is a lineage predating the modern-archaic split and reintrogresses into Denisovans 100+kya. Modern day East Asian humans have a few traces of that superarchaic group through their Denisovan ancestry. All humans have a trace of a "ghost lineage" that is younger than the superarchaics but older than the modern-archaic split, this introgresses into African modern humans prior to OoA II and we all carry a bit of it. It might be the same group that introgressed into European Neanderthals ~250kya. I really do not see a reason we should add to (and necessarily confuse for typical readers) this terminology set, it is not exhaustive but it is simple, encompassing, and current.

• The taxonomy guidelines being followed in this article are in the Infobox; for now, the article is sticking to the current version of the Infobox. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:06, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

• I am talking about terms for clades used in general discussion. I did not mention binomial nomenclature at all. The infobox does not relate to what I mentioned. Mausfield (talk) 19:07, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

• I'm not sure which direction your comments are taking here; I'm assuming you are preparing an edit improvement suggestion in the format which I've discussed above and which you've indicated that you "Got it." The current Infobox uses the following scientific classification: "Genus: Homo; Species: H. neanderthalensis. Binomial name: Homo neanderthalensis." The article itself ought to be consistent with this classification as presented. Are you planning to add any improvement suggestions either today or tomorrow in the format which I've discussed above? ErnestKrause (talk) 19:40, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

  No. I'm just going to start editing because clearly there is some kind of communication breakdown between us. You arbitrarily reject my cited scientific corrections, and when I make more general suggestions like here you simply refuse to read what I've said and say you don't understand. It's extremely annoying. Mausfield (talk) 21:06, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

• Note to User:Mausfield: You appear to be edit warring at this time on the article main space. You can correct this edit warring by removing your sequence of reverts, in which you are trying to force your edits into the article without Talk page discussion or Peer review discussion. After you remove these edits which you are forcing into the article main space, then you can then start normal talk page discussion or peer review discussion in order to argue your case against the Peer review consensus edit which you have started reverting at this time. You can try to correct this by restoring the previous version of the article and then you can return to the Talk page discussion or the Peer review discussion to present your case. Currently you appear to be edit warring against Wikipedia policy. ErnestKrause (talk) 12:43, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Chidgk1

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I am a complete layman with no expert knowledge so I hope experts will check and correct anything I comment or edit. I think the second sentence needs copyediting. How about:

Perhaps because early modern humans came to Europe, by about 40,000 years ago all Neanderthals were extinct.

I've added part of your version into the lede; let's see if other editors comment. ErnestKrause (talk) 10:41, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with it and it's scientifically up to date. The consensus view generally that there's no good evidence of European Neanderthals later than 36kya in Iberia. The 28kya claim is a single group (Finlayson et al 2006) using carbon dating which is quite sensitive to contamination, and was not widely accepted by 2014 when it was redated by Higham et al and in line with the broader consensus.

I might suggest wording in such as way that we focus what the available evidence supports, to preemptively compromise with disagreers on the consensus extinction boundary by avoiding an absolute statement:

The timeline of Neanderthal extinction is uncertain, but generally considered to be complete in Asia and most of Europe by 40,000 years ago, perhaps because early modern humans came to Europe. Currently, the latest widely accepted evidence of European Neanderthals are dated to 36,000 years ago in the Iberian Peninsula.

My previous wording of "extinct in most of Europe" is supported by the sources, and was chosen to allow the following statement of the slightly later refugio in southern Spain, which is currently dated ~36kya bp. Mausfield (talk) 14:03, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Most readers won't know IPA so I think a sound file or two for pronunciation would be good (if you like I can add one for non-fricative then you or someone else could add the fricative one as I am not certain how to pronounce that one).

Try it and let's see what others might say. ErnestKrause (talk) 10:41, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

I have added my own pronunciation as a native speaker of British English but I won't attempt any others Chidgk1 (talk) 08:11, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Are you sure we need "further reading"? Some featured articles, such as Climate change don't have any.

Questionable list of citations. Archive for the present time. ErnestKrause (talk) 10:49, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

I may comment further here later this week, but to save time will make a few minor changes and tags directly to the article but feel free to revert any which are not improvements. Chidgk1 (talk) 07:52, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Let us know if there are more items on your list of edits to look at. ErnestKrause (talk) 10:49, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Suggest you go through and make tenses a bit more consistent. It doesn't have to be 100% consıstent but occasionally there are slightly jarring tense shifts. These examples are near to each other: "Neanderthals normally collectED raw materials from a nearby source" ...... "Some communities WERE also makING tools" ...... "European populations HAD also BEEN manufacturING wood spears". Personally I prefer the simple past tense as in my first example, so the 2nd and 3rd would be "Some communities MADE tools" and "European populations manufacturED wood spears" Chidgk1 (talk) 08:28, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm going with your reading of simple past tense as preferable. It should be up to date now, mostly for the Technology section; you can others as needed in the article. ErnestKrause (talk) 11:34, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

The phylogenic tree diagram is hard for me to understand as a layperson. For example the word "clade" is used without any explanation. Is it possible to have a brief explanation next to the diagram to avoid having to click away to the phylogeny article I have just linked to find out what the lines and connections mean? I am guessing italics means a species name - so does that mean the author of the diagram thinks Neanderthals are not a separate species as they don't have italics? Also elsewhere in the article it says Denisovans are close relatives so wouldn't it be better to have a phylogeny including them? Chidgk1 (talk) 13:51, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Now using more familiar term for evolutionary branch. Regarding the grouping of names, scholars such as Trenton Holliday consider the separation between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens to be quite settled for the most part. Various evolutionary branching among the Neanderthals is represented in the phylogeny branching diagram and discussed somewhat further in the prose of the article itself. If you are interested in some of the formal terms used, then there is some information available in the Wikipedia article for cladistics. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:06, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Branch is fine, I would suggest "Archaic" instead of Neanderthal, because Neanderthals are not the root of that branch, they are a bundle of later populations once its established in Eurasia.

The divisions within the archaic branch is still very uncertain because we have barely 20 genomes, whereas the division between our branch and theirs is certain. The text "Homo sapiens" should perhaps say "Modern humans", as there is a sizable group which defines sapiens as the population ancestral to us and the archaics, and our species as sapiens sapiens.

For using a phylogeny including Denisovans, I agree with Chidgk1 and think that the standard general tree structure almost all researchers use should be used on this article and Denisovan. This branch has a 500-800kya divergence between our lineage and the archaics, a divergence between Denisovans and Neanderthals, and typically denotes well-established admixture events because they are obviously super important to the story. I don't think Template:Clade can do this but to be honest its a space-eating tool anyways, especially on mobile. A figure would be far better.

A couple examples from this year in my open tabs currently:

1. See Figure 1 "Summary of admixture history" in Tagore and Akey 2026
2. see the first figure "TRACE infers archaic ancestry without reference genomes" in Zhang et al 2026

Mausfield (talk) 14:51, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Some of the alt text could be improved - for example the Europe glacier map alt text - see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Onboarding_guidance_on_how_to_write_alt_text.png Digressing - it is annoying that alt text still can't be defined centrally on the Wikimedia Commons file description page whereas on Wikidata alt text can be added https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P11265 Chidgk1 (talk) 08:45, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm thinking that Dunkleosteus77 might be able to do those when he logs on possibly later this week. You also appear to have a good feel for this concern about alt text descriptions and you can try to update that information as may be more fitting to the article. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:11, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Sorry but because of the stupidity of not being able to write them on Commons I am not motivated Chidgk1 (talk) 06:52, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Don't think you have to unlink all the duplicates but under the 3 dots is "highlight duplicate links" of which some could probably be unlinked Chidgk1 (talk) 09:05, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

I'll try to get to the other template cite tags in the article over the next day or two. Possibly you could provide the links to the elipsis marks which you would like to discuss further here. More later. ErnestKrause (talk) 16:02, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi Chidgk1; The article should be up to date, and I've addressed the cite request templates in the article that I was able to find. If there are any more let me know. Just ping me if you might have more enhancements or improvements for the article. Cheers. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:36, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

@ErnestKrause: I think the first paragraph needs simplifying (see style guidelines on first para and first sentence) and I also dislike the word "group" as people might think something like "tribe". How about:

Neanderthals ^ⓘ were a kind of humans who lived in Europe and Western and Central Asia. They died out about 40,000 years ago, perhaps because early modern humans came to Europe.

You could put difficult words like the IPA, scientific names, "Pleistocene", "Iberian" later in the article or in footnotes (if you like footnotes with refs you can see an example in Coal power in Turkey). By the way I just heard the word "Neanderthal" on BBC radio and they used the same pronunciation as me - so I am pretty sure it is standard in British English. If you would like me to rerecord it as a plural let me know. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:47, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. As a simplified version of the lede paragraph, I've simplified the wording following some of your suggestions; let me know if it looks ok. Regarding your Research section template tag, then you should add one of your two suggestions and remove the tag. Let's see how it looks. ErnestKrause (talk) 07:53, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for quick response but the beginning is still not quite in line with the manual of style I linked above (see for example their advice on removing pronunciation from 1st sentence).

Re the research two grammatically correct alternatives but with slightly different meanings are:

"Since the early 20th century numerous other Neanderthal discoveries have been made, establishing H. neanderthalensis as a legitimate species."

or

"By the early 20th century, numerous other Neanderthal discoveries had been made, establishing H. neanderthalensis as a legitimate species."

If either of these are scientifically and historically correct I am guessing the 2nd one, but as a layperson I am not certain so don't want to edit it in myself. Chidgk1 (talk) 08:07, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Nice comments, and I've gone with your option two. Let me know if it should be revisited again. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:53, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Neither is scientifically correct, the statement that more fossils have been found is correct but the number of fossils recovered does not support or detract from the characterization of Neanderthals as a distinct species. Its archaeogenomics or morphology which contribute to the argument.

An accurate way to phrase what sentence probably intending would be

"By the early 20th century, numerous other fossils showing morphology consistent with Neanderthal 1 each other had been discovered, solidifying Neanderthals as a unique group rather than individual humans suffering some deformation." Mausfield (talk) 20:07, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

but as a layperson I am not certain so don't want to edit it in myself This is really admirable. Honestly. I wish more people felt this way, I certainly do in the 99% of topics I have no expertise in.

I commented below a better version of what I think this sentence was trying to get across: that Neanderthals as a group and not individually malformed humans was bolstered by many more specimens with similar morphology. Mausfield (talk) 20:27, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Note to User:Mausfield: You appear to be edit warring at this time on the article main space. You can correct this edit warring by removing your sequence of reverts to force your edits into the article without Talk page discussion or Peer review discussion. You can then start normal talk page discussion or peer review discussion in order to argue your case against the Peer review consensus edit which you have starting reverting today. You can try to correct this by restoring the previous version of the article and then you can return to the Talk page discussion or the Peer review discussion to present your case. Currently you appear to be edit warring against Wikipedia policy. ErnestKrause (talk) 21:51, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

I have no more comments. I can see that there is a lot of great stuff in this article. Feel free to ping me when it is put forward as a featured article candidate. Chidgk1 (talk) 05:40, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.