> They realized that the offspring of those first waves of Neanderthal-modern matings must have stayed with the Neanderthals, therefore leaving no record in living humans. "Because we can now incorporate the Neanderthal component into our genetic studies, we are seeing these earlier dispersals in ways that we weren't able to before," Akey said. Our early ancestors did not accept Neanderthal half breeds as one of their own. In other words, our early ancestors had strict standards of who they considered one of their own and the Neanderthals did not. Another way of looking at it is some of the ancient humans had loose standards of who they considered one of their own. They interbred and blended with the Neanderthals. Other ancient humans considered these practices unacceptable and instead sought to find the best mates for themselves and their offspring to carry on and better their lineage. We owe everything we have today to *those* ancient humans.