How do we know that Neanderthal skeletons are Neanderthal skeletons?

[The Grand Nudger]

Indeed. Given a local population that's mostly Hsn, what's the probability that it's them on them, vs Hss on them?

-and given a breeding population that's mostly hss, what's the likelihood of hsn purebred lines persisting?

[Fireball]

I've read a fair amount of literature about covid and biologists who have been looking at the human genome have discovered that people who have some Hsn genes on  Chromosome 3 are more susceptible to covid, in terms of mortality.

[LinuxGal]

How do we know that Neanderthal skeletons are Neanderthal skeletons and not just human skeletons experiencing decomposition? Just asking.

Neanderthal: "How do we know Cro-Magnon skeletons are not just Neanderthal skeletons experiencing decomposition?  They sure look like it to us!"

[Anomalocaris]

How do we know that Neanderthal skeletons are Neanderthal skeletons and not just human skeletons experiencing decomposition? Just asking.

The morphological traits of Neanderthal skeletons don’t just span the whole gamut from virtually indistinguishable to undamaged and undeformed normal HSS skeleton, to skeletons that deviate greatly in apparence from HSS in every part of the body, as one would expect if the what we classify as Neanderthals  just reflect random effects of postmortem natural alterations to the shapes of HSS skeletons

Instead the skeletons we discover mostly cluster around a particular set of morphological traits around the skull that lies very far outside the normal range of morphologies of modern or Paleolithic HSS.    There is no conceivable postmortem effect that could systematically cause this set of traits to appear in buried skulls.     So this is very strong evidence that Neanderthals, when alive, were indeed a very distinct population which have evolved separately from,  and have been taking on traits imposed by different evolutionary pressures than those experienced by, HSS for a very long time.

[Jehanne]

How do we know that Neanderthal skeletons are Neanderthal skeletons and not just human skeletons experiencing decomposition? Just asking.

The morphological traits of Neanderthal skeletons don’t just span the whole gamut from virtually indistinguishable to undamaged and undeformed normal HSS skeleton, to skeletons that deviate greatly in apparence from HSS in every part of the body, as one would expect if the what we classify as Neanderthals  just reflect random effects of postmortem natural alterations to the shapes of HSS skeletons

Instead the skeletons we discover mostly cluster around a particular set of morphological traits around the skull that lies very far outside the normal range of morphologies of modern or Paleolithic HSS.    There is no conceivable postmortem effect that could systematically cause this set of traits to appear in buried skulls.     So this is very strong evidence that Neanderthals, when alive, were indeed a very distinct population which have evolved separately from,  and have been taking on traits imposed by different evolutionary pressures than those experienced by, HSS for a very long time.

In other words, from cluster analysis:

Wikipedia -- Cluster Analysis