I’m not familiar with the reasons folks discount the absorption hypothesis. If there were more sapiens than Neanderthals, one would expect the Neanderthals to

I’m not familiar with the reasons folks discount the absorption hypothesis. If there were more sapiens than Neanderthals, one would expect the Neanderthals to interbreed and fade away. Relative ‘superiority’ and mutations and the like don’t even come into it... if a Neanderthal thinks it’s cool to have an exotic sapient chick, or vice versa, the ‘race’ will disappear in a few generations. I don’t see many pure-bred Mayans in Mexico these days. (Or, for that matter, pure-bred Spaniards.) The Neanderthals certainly had some odd skeletal features... but, if one were objective, you can find similar variety amongst skeletons (particularly skulls) of modern humans. I don’t mean feature similar to Neanderthals; rather, I mean a level of variety that is similar in degree to the differences between Neanderthal bones and the ‘average’ modern.