Evidence that Neanderthal could have survived well into modern times and could interbreed with Homo Sapiens
The Almas is a cryptozoological species of presumed hominid reputed to inhabit the Caucasus and Pamir Mountains of central Asia. In other words, they could be relict hominoids, i.e. isolated descendents of ancient forms of humans, such as Neanderthal. Sometimes, these hominids are refered to as troglodytes.
One such hominid was captured in the wild in Abkhazia, Western Caucasus (now in Georgia) in the late 1800's. Her name was Zana. She was buried near the village of Tkhina, but her remains were not yet found by modern scientists to examine her skull and DNA. She, however, had a son with a
Accounts of people who had seen Zana describe her as having black or dark grey skin (maybe partially from dirt, as she was imprisoned in a cage like a wild animal) with reddish black hair. After 3 years in a cage, Zana had became tamer and was released. She was particularly athletic, fast at both running and swimming.
She gave birth several times to "half-breed" children (with local villagers), and four of them (born between 1878 and 1884) are known to have been taken away from her and raised by local families. Contrarily to her who had been raised in the wild, her children could speak and behave like normal men and women, in spite of some strange physical and mental features.
The two sons (Dzhanda and Kwhit) and two daughters (Kodzhanar and Gamasa) had children of their own, whose descendents still live in that region. Khwit and Gamasa were given the surname Sabekia.
Kwhit died in 1954. His skull was examined by scientists, and indeed shows clear evidence of strong Neanderthal features mixed with modern features.
It is interesting to note that Gamasa and Khwit were described as darked skinned and powerfully built, but otherwise lacking Zana's facial apperance. Some genes are dominant and other recessive. This is why a child born to a European and an East Asian parent will look much more East Asian than European. The same is true of a child half Black African, and half European. So if Neanderthal contribute to modern European genes, it is likely that millenia of interbreeding have mostly erased most of their physical characteristics, leaving only to modern Europeans some very slight Neanderthal features not found among people elsewhere in the world.
British anthropologist Myra Shackley in "Still Living ?" describes Ivan Ivlov's 1963 observation of a whole family of Almas.
