For most people, except sub Saharan Africans, we are also talking about our ancestors when talking about neanderthals. Most of those bones we see on museums are probably the great x grandfathers of many people walking past.
Obviously we have no idea what happened over huge parts of deep human pasts, Neanderthals were a sparse population to begin with, and absorbing their people into the rest of humanity just by fucking is certainly a solution
When people have limited choices to vote on, voting for a or b does not make them like a or b.
It just means it’s a “boiling the frog situation” when gradually changing the goalposts makes people not notice the real issues.
The average American really has not changed that much from the past generations, but the candidates that are allowed to run in either party have drifted rightward.
If I want to vote for green, and I can choose only on a greyscale, my interpretation of which shade of gray might be closest to green might be a personal choice, highly disputed.