Ella Al-Shamahi

They're just a circle off somewhere in Siberia.

Yes, you say that.

Yes, some people will argue that actually they never went extinct and that they just, it's a bit like when London just kept getting bigger and bigger and just usurping all the towns around.

Fair enough.

No, some people actually, and you know what?

There's an argument for that, right?

I think it is fair to say we cannot agree.

And I think there is a reason for that.

I think it's because the evidence is.

There's a lot of different reasons, I think we can say.

I personally find it very, very hard to ignore a few pieces of evidence.

I think the Neanderthals were clearly doing fine for a very, very long time.

Although they were surviving much better than us in those climates for a very, very long time.

It makes sense because they were adapted to them for hundreds of thousands of years.

Whereas remember, we were the immigrants, we were the new ones, we weren't adapted.

Neanderthals, you are right, had very, very small effective population sizes.

What I mean by that is they were really inbred.

For those who are kind of interested in genetics, they had very, very, very low levels of heterozygosity, which means their DNA just wasn't very diverse.

It reflects a really small gene pool.

And as a result of that,