The original Africans are Neandertals (in part)

In antiquity what we term Tunisia and Tripolitania were part of "African province." Just as "Asia" originally referred to the margins of what we now term Asia (regions of Anatolia), so "Africa" originally denoted a subset of the northwest fringe of the continent which became Africa. In biogeography this segment of the continent is actually not part of Africa (it is part of the Palearctic ecozone). And yet the vicissitudes of early modern cartography are such that continent had to be bounded by water on as many sides as possible, and today we clumsily make recourse to the term "Sub-Saharan Africa" to distinguish that region from the northern littoral, which is really part of the Mediterranean world. This context is somewhat relevant when we evaluate a new PLoS ONE paper, North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with Neandertals. This paper makes little sense unless you've read an earlier ...