Northwestern Neanderthals formed a connected population with no recent human admixture
Genome data from 27 late Neanderthals in the Meuse Basin and a high-coverage Goyet genome show northwestern European Neanderthals were a closely related, broadly connected population with limited kin-based inbreeding, no evidence of recent modern-human introgression, and greater connectivity than eastern Neanderthals. A GN1–Vindija relationship places these western Neanderthals in a shared population history around 54,000 years ago, while mtDNA reveals multiple lineages and Y chromosomes do not cluster by site. The results support an isolation-by-distance pattern rather than a single local group and find no clear rise in genetic load over time to explain extinction. Modern human ancestry in Eurasia appears linked to Vindija-like Neanderthals outside NW Europe; overall, western Neanderthals were diverse and interconnected in their final millennia.