Nonsense. Some Africans don’t have Neanderthal genes but plenty can and do, especially North Africans. Asians, Indians, Amerindians, all have Neanderthal genes.

What those studies say is that almost everyone outside of Africa including descendants of recent Africans(“black” people) have Neanderthal dna.

“no genetic patterns that link all the populations within a continent to the exclusion of populations in other places”

This is correct.

Don’t come here and misrepresent data.

May I then rearrange my thoughts.

The Neanderthal link was used purely as an example and not in defence of their status. Prior to DNA sequencing most of the arguments for & against were based upon physical traits, & almost entirely upon skeletal remains.
We now have access to DNA sequencing etc. These & other methods now add valuable data to our knowledge.
So to take up your point: “little evidence of the Neanderthal genome in Eurasian & Denisovan populations”.
However, the evidence still exists and consequently is a marker in the genome. That is, it can be traced physically by scientific testing.

Sickle cell anaemia still exists in one out ten Afro Americans and also appears from what I can understand in the Greek population. Again this is also a marker and can be traced by testing.
The same is applicable to the AMY1 sequence (digestion of starches), The LCT sequence (responsible for the digestion of milk sugars) and the FOX2 sequence and so on. (ref to the research done by Katherine S. Pollard – U.C. Berkely))

My thinking is that all the above are very defined markers in the human genome. If one now considers the skeletal remains found at Portus, these are young at two thousand years old – especially when one considers the much older Hominid finds. They are also at approx. two thousand years old , well within the first half life of C14 dating. So in theory we should be able to extract viable DNA.

On the basis the we are able to extract viable DNA from these remains, my thinking is that we use these markers to add to our knowledge and place the remains within a population group.
As the AMY1 & LCT sequences are said to have developed within the last ten to fifteen thousand years, this data would be of interest in looking at the prevailing diets etc.

I hope that this now clarifies my thinking.

Yes, there is a little evidence of the Neanderthal genome in Eurasian populations, and also “Denisovans” in SE Asia/Sahul; however, we have no evidence of ancient DNA from Africa. None has been extracted (not even from Klasies River Mouth). We have no idea of the genetic composition of H. sapiens populations in N. Africa prior to 30 ka; thus, we do not know what variation there was in H. sapiens populations expanding out of Africa (we have no ancient DNA from Skhul or Qafzeh either).

It is also not widely agreed that Neanderthals are a subspecies of H. sapiens (see a recent paper by White et al. 2014 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416514000221), in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology). Only a handful of people have returned to Neanderthals as a subspecies, and they are mostly multiregionalists. Even Wolpoff and Caspari had to write a book arguing that multiregional evolution did not mean races were true, or that some groups of people were more “evolved”. Anyway, Neanderthals have much less genetic variation (from specimens analysed up to now) than people today. Prufer et al. (2014; Nature) demonstrate that inbreeding (with half-siblings, and/or nephews/neices), rather than outbreeding, was part of Neanderthal mating networks. There is a whole world of ancient hominin genetic variation that we can only glimpse; much has been lost, and this means that generalisations (like “1-4% of our genes are from Neanderthals”) hugely overstate the case. Interbreeding could have been very minor indeed, but later magnified through genetic drift, bottlenecking, etc.

The other part of your comment was regarding sickle cell anaemia. The frequency of sickle cell anaemia closely matches the frequency of falciparum malaria. This is classic case of natural selection. The carrier form (HbAS) provides a survival against malaria – and hence reproductive advantage. Homozygosity (HbSS) however has long-term lethal effects. The deleterious effects of the sickle cell form negated for that HbAS have advantage in areas with malaria – whereas this is not true in areas without malaria (and hence sickle cell is not common in areas without falciparum malaria). This is simply a case of natural selection and reflects ecogeography (and does not provide any support for race).

If I may comment:
This is no longer true: as you are no doubt aware the question of relationship between the Neanderthals Homo Neanderthalensis & modern “Homo Sapiens is a debate that has raged for a number of years now.

Recent research papers on genetic make up now show that most Caucasians carry a percentage of Neanderthal genes in their genetic makeup. This is not true of any Africans as there appears to be a branching away from the Caucasian gene pool prior to contact between the Neanderthals and the Caucasian populations of Northern Europe.

Early modern humankind in sites such as the Klasies River in South Africa do not exhibit these traces of Neanderthal genes.

A further point is that in mosquito infested areas of Africa, the African population in that area are afflicted with Sickle cell anaemia as this tends to protect this population group against the malaria threat. Sickle cell anaemia is not that prevalent amongst Caucasians.

Please understand that is not in any way intended as support for racial classification. The point that I wish to make that there is evidence for racial distinction in the same way that we again now classify Neanderthal man as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis.