For most of the twentieth century, the dominant view was one of replacement: modern humans arrived in Europe, and the Neanderthals, unable to compete, went extinct.

The picture was one of displacement, possibly violent, of an archaic lineage by a more cognitively capable modern one.

Ancient DNA research has complicated and enriched this picture enormously.

The key finding — initially controversial, now firmly established — is that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.

The interbreeding was not one-time or trivial.

It produced descendants who survived and reproduced, and today, all people of non-African ancestry carry roughly one to four percent Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, the legacy of interbreeding that occurred when anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals shared the same landscape.

For Zlatý kůň, the picture is particularly striking.