system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What does Neanderthal gene sequencing actually tell us about human-Neanderthal interactions? And is there any other evidence of interaction?
gpt
The first archeological sites where we found Neanderthals they were buried under newer evidence of Homo Sapiens. So the theory was that over time Neanderthals were displaced for Sapiens. However the more sites we found and the more we were able to explore of these sites the more complex things became. We did not just find Neanderthal remains under Sapiens remains but sometimes it was the other way around and sometimes they were buried right next to each other. And this suggests that they were not simply competing with each other and over shared resources but they appeared to be living together in the same caves at the same time. And that is quite uncommon for different species to do. And when we were able to sequence Neanderthal genes we discovered that some of the unique mutations in Neanderthals which were not present in Sapiens at that time are now present in modern day humans. That means that modern humans have some Neanderthal ancestors. And that explains the previous archeological finds where we see Neanderthals and Sapiens living together because they were actually together and able to reproduce with each other.