For most people, except sub Saharan Africans, we are also talking about our ancestors when talking about neanderthals. Most of those bones we see on museums are probably the great x grandfathers of many people walking past.
Obviously we have no idea what happened over huge parts of deep human pasts, Neanderthals were a sparse population to begin with, and absorbing their people into the rest of humanity just by fucking is certainly a solution
Not so sure, except for a last few holdouts in Spain about 40k years ago, who were probably whipped out by natural catastrophe along with regular humans in that area.
I think we kept diluting their gene pool by having sex with them and out breeding them.
A lot of the initial popularity of Isis in Iraq was due to very similar factors. This was an uprising of a complex mix of people and goals. Most involved at first were established leaders who were patriotic and tribes who were oppressed by the new and invalid government.
This of course was airbrushed in the west and countless thousands were killed by Americans during the uprising.
Syria was destabilized due to the mass death.
The main takeaway here is that force often seems like an answer but that can go badly
What little of it that is