Melanesian DNA

I always wondered the connection between the "old ones" Homo sapiens idaltu and any of the other tribes. Idaltu had a facial feature (reconstructed of course), like some of those in the Melanesian tribe.
I have no isea and no skills in the interpretations of any of this (The DNA data alone is bulked up in complex genetic expansions and (Wht I call) "BOZO" statistics ( like variograms and trend surface analyses)

I am continually amazed how many puzzle pieces they keep bringing in.

yeh but as we get more pieces, we discover that there are many more puzzles.

We are more gracile with thinner bones than our Homo Sapiens ancestors. Melanesians don't seem to be particularly heavy browed. The people of Herto, Ethiopia that some refer to as Homo Sapiens Idaltu seemed to have exceptionally heavy brows.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-data-offer-evidence-unknown-extinct-human-relative
Somewhat better article on the same topic.

One of the things this new article mentions is the question of Africans mixing. There is some DNA in some Africans that is not identified as modern human. One of the researchers who originally found it proclaimed it as Homo Erectus DNA, since it seems to be over 300,000 years old. But other researchers have said it could well be a separate group of Homo Sapiens who broke off and who have not made it into the modern genome. It could also be considered possible evidence that Homo Sapiens, (modern humans), are older than 195,000 years old, which is age of the oldest physical remains found so far in Omo, Ethiopia. The species might well predate the age of the oldest physical remains.