Comment by crazydoggers

To be clear, sapiens didn’t descend from neanderthals or Denisovans, our species lived alongside those and interbred with them. The common ancestor of sapiens and neanderthals was probably around 500,000 years, probably heidelbergensis. So half a million years is “short” but also still Homo, and something you would almost definitely identify closer to human than ape.

Shared social structures and behaviors can last through much longer periods of time than 8 million years. For example take bees and ants sharing a common ancestor in the 100 of millions of years age.