Since there’s a bit of Neanderthal in us all SECTIONS Last Updated: Apr 06, 2021, 08:07 AM IST Share iStock It was rather unfair of Joe Biden to call the lifting of mask requirements in Texas and Mississippi ‘Neanderthal thinking’. Related Even as late as pre-March 2020, not many people would be willing to accept, much less admit, that there is a bit of the Neanderthal lurking in modern Homo sapiens. After all, Neanderthals disappeared off the face of the earth 40,000 years ago, once we humans moved out of Africa and got cracking with this civilisation thing. But not before a few of us and a few of them hooked up in the 5,400 years we co-existed on Earth, leading to almost all non-Africans today having a smidgen of Neanderthal in their bodies.