I'm neither a biologist nor an anthropologist. But, it's fairly comprehensible if you consider the following three factors:
No. 1, there were way less homo running around the planet than there are today. So, in the modern human era, we had at least some time to diversify, now counting 8 billion individuals and more. Having said that, our DNA pool is still very small, which may not be a good thing if you want to calculate our chances of avoiding extinction. But it's also a testament of how specialized we are (which is also never a good thing in the long run).
The second is that we are easily tricked by the fact that only a few genes can vastly alter a creature's appearance. Think of skin color in humans or fur color in, I don't know, cats. This is evolutionary beneficial because it allows species to quickly adapt to their surroundings, even in an epi-genetic time-span. Foxes and hares are shown to completely change their fur color from brown to white when migrating to colder, icier regions within only a few generations. The same can be observed with the domestication syndrome, recently shown in foxes during a Russian study.
And thirdly, at least in Europeans, Neanderthal DNA makes up 2-3% of of their DNA already. So, part of it is "already included", if you will.
Outliver t1_j414wku wrote
Reply to How are there more genetic differences between two of us than between us and Neanderthals? by bookposting5
I'm neither a biologist nor an anthropologist. But, it's fairly comprehensible if you consider the following three factors:
No. 1, there were way less homo running around the planet than there are today. So, in the modern human era, we had at least some time to diversify, now counting 8 billion individuals and more. Having said that, our DNA pool is still very small, which may not be a good thing if you want to calculate our chances of avoiding extinction. But it's also a testament of how specialized we are (which is also never a good thing in the long run).
The second is that we are easily tricked by the fact that only a few genes can vastly alter a creature's appearance. Think of skin color in humans or fur color in, I don't know, cats. This is evolutionary beneficial because it allows species to quickly adapt to their surroundings, even in an epi-genetic time-span. Foxes and hares are shown to completely change their fur color from brown to white when migrating to colder, icier regions within only a few generations. The same can be observed with the domestication syndrome, recently shown in foxes during a Russian study.
And thirdly, at least in Europeans, Neanderthal DNA makes up 2-3% of of their DNA already. So, part of it is "already included", if you will.