Challenge, I don't know enough about the claims to either support or dismiss them. I'd have to read the actual study, and my educational background is not biology, so I'd have to do a lot of cross studying to fully understand the report. I was just trying to clarify the basic claims and reasoning. Essentially they have found DNA chains in European/Asian homo sapiens samples that match chains found in neanderthal samples, but those chains were not present in sub-Saharan homo sapien samples.
Those differences are very slight compared to those differences between humans/neanderthal and chimps. Current evidence has chimps are much closer to the animal that is the common ancestor of hominids and chimpanzees and thus will bear a closer resemblance to early hominds, homo habilis for example. Neanderthal are millions of years downstream from that though.
Warning, throwing out rough numbers based on data remembered from classes long past:
Homo sapiens/Homo neanderthalensis and Pan troglodytes (chimps) nearest common ancestor would probably be found 5-10 million years ago. The nearest common ancestor for Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis would be, perhaps, 500,000 years ago.
