The hominid species that lived in Europe and Asia and interbred with modern humans was the Neanderthal. More formally called Homo neanderthalensis, Neanderthals were an extinct group of archaic humans who lived mainly during the Middle and Late Pleistocene.
The first recognized Neanderthal fossil was discovered in Germany’s Neander Valley in 1856, giving the group its name. Fossils show adaptations including robust bones, broad chests, short limbs, heavy brow ridges, and large brains—features once misleadingly portrayed as evidence of primitiveness. Neanderthals made sophisticated stone tools, used fire, hunted, and cared for injured group members.
Genetic research transformed the picture in 2010, when the Neanderthal genome showed that Neanderthals and modern humans exchanged genes. Most people with primarily non-African ancestry carry roughly 1–2% Neanderthal DNA. Neanderthals were therefore close human relatives who met and interbred with Homo sapiens, not direct evolutionary ancestors that simply turned into modern Europeans. Homo erectus is an earlier, broader human lineage, while Australopithecus afarensis lived much earlier in Africa.