The extinction of the Neanderthals might have occurred in the time period after early humans arrived in Europe due to their cultural superiority, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University and Meiji University. Previous research shows that Neanderthal populations lived in Europe undisturbed for hundreds of thousands of years before disappearing approximately 50 thousand years ago, five thousand years after modern humans arrived after migrating out of Africa.
Scientists have come up with many hypotheses to explain this occurrence, including modern humans carrying diseases, a mass killing or the inability of the Neanderthals to change to the adapting environment. However, the new study reports that their new model suggests that the root of the extinction was due to the cultural advantages of modern humans that made the survival of the culturally underdeveloped Neanderthals impossible, according to a press release.
The team used a computer model that had been previously designed to mirror interspecies competition, although they added elements in order to allow it to consider cultural and technical abilities. The results showed that cultural advancement could lead to the displacement of another species, no matter the size of the underdeveloped species. Furthermore, the model proposed the creation of a feedback loop whereby the more dominant modern humans became, the more their cultural advantage increased.
The findings ultimately point to cultural advancements, which go hand-in-hand with technological innovation, as the main reason that Neanderthals likely went extinct due to their inability to compete for natural resources. However, it is still unclear why the Neanderthals could not have simply copied the advanced cultural and technological processes used by the early humans in order to compete.
The findings were published in the Dec. 21 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
