Genius of Darwin

[wufwugy]

its not evolved from apes, but share a common ancestor with apes. iirc we do not know who the most recent common ancestor was. also iirc we're closer to apes than to neanderthals. interestingly, neanderthals were probably equally as intelligent as humans

Not true, we split with neanderthals maybe around what, 250,000 years ago from the same common ancestor and we split with apes 7 million years ago.
You can discuss the dates, but we are closer to neaderthals than apes

and we know our most recent common ancestor is Sahelanthropus tchadensis which we think was a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees

Are you suggesting we split, as in derived, from Neanderthals?

Are you suggesting we co-existed with Neanderthals?

Please clarify.

not split from neanderthals, but split from the common ancestor. this is often colloquially referred to as split with neanderthals. its describing the point where that which later became neanderthal and that which later became sapiens stopped breeding with each other, and went their separate ways. we split with each other but from our common ancestor, even though we werent sapiens or neanderthal at the time.

we dont know a whole lot about neanderthals, but there was possibly some coexistence. could have been anywhere from nothing to quite a bit in isolated areas. as a whole, no there wasnt comingling. populations were small, and you know how tribal things work.

a huge practical difference we know between us was in how we hunted, and probably where we hunted. iirc the most current explanation for neanderthal extinction was due to climate change neanderthal lost their short range ambush hunting habitat, and they couldnt make it out in the open plains due to terrible agility and endurance that sapiens had. they had amazing strength tho.

also they never had that big a population i think, and a lack of genetic diversity really fucks species.