... Neanderthals had not gone extinct?

Today I invite you to another thought experiment in our category what if. Nearly everyone knows, that we humans descend from apes. Over different homo species the homo sapiens developed. But there was also the homo neanderthalensis, who had the same ancestor as we, the homo sapiens. Nowadays the neanderthals are extinct, but what would be, if they weren't.

First of all, what exactly is a neanderthal. The neanderthal is a relative to us humans (homo sapiens), but while the homo sapiens developed in Africa the homo neanderthalensis developed in Europa and later in west Asia.

The neanderthals have short legs and wide shoulders. In addition, you can see some differences on their heads compared to homo sapiens. The neanderthals have prominent brow ridges and sloping foreheads. There are different opinion about the neanderthals' intelligence. Some say, due to their bigger brain, they were as intelligent as the homo sapiens, even more advanced in some areas like religion or domestication. Other have the opinion that the homo neanderthalensis would never have been able to have the inventions the homo sapiens did, because they were less intelligent.

Whereas the neanderthals were very strong, the homo sapiens could travel more and so spread their DNA over the world and had a bigger population.

As we know the world, always the strongest are dominating and ruling the world. Due to the first opinion, saying the neanderthals have the same intelligence, they would dominate the world because of their physical advantage. The homo sapiens on the other side would still be more populated and widespread. That would lead to a racial divide and a dominant minority of neanderthals.

If the neanderthals didn't gone extinct, they would perhaps rule the world.

Listening to the other point of view, neanderthals would have never been able to have the same innovation as the homo sapiens. That would lead to a domination by intelligence of the homo sapiens. But for the homo sapiens it would be hard to oppress the neanderthals, because they are physically a lot stronger.

Some other scientist also think, that neanderthals didn't gone extinct at all. Let's follow that thought, by assuming a peaceful coexistence and interbreeding between the two species. The interbreeding would lead to a mixture of the DNA and after a lot of "mixed" generations the "pure" neanderthal and the "pure" homo sapiens would disappear. In modern humans DNA is found some DNA, similar to neanderthal DNA. Due to the higher population of homo sapiens, today the humans only have around four percent of neanderthal DNA.

There are a lot of opinions and possibilities out there, what could have happened to the neanderthals. We will never be one hundred percent sure what actually happened, because it happened lots of millenniums ago. We only know, that the bones found from the people, whom we call homo neanderthalensis, are different to the modern humans skeletons.