🗿 How Neanderthals disappeared: slow mixing, not sudden doom

A new model shows that repeated small arrivals of Homo sapiens into small, scattered Neanderthal groups could, by gene flow alone, replace most Neanderthal DNA in ~10,000–30,000 years.

The math works with tiny per-episode inputs (~0.8–8% newcomers each cycle), matching the archaeological window and what we see today — small Neanderthal traces persisting in non-Africans without needing a catastrophe or big selective advantage.

Takeaway: Neanderthals may have faded mainly through steady admixture with incoming modern humans, not a single extinction event.

Source: Amadei et al., 2025. A simple analytical model for Neanderthal disappearance due to genetic dilution by recurrent small-scale immigrations of modern humans.