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I want to talk about Neanderthals. Now I know this

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Thursday, 21st June 2007

  board deals with Ancient History and Archaeology and that the subject of Neanderthals involves the science of anthropology, but there's no science board available. This seems like the logical alternative.
  
  Recent hypotheses regarding Neanderthals suggests that Homo sapiens neanderthalensis were probably as intelligent in many ways as Homo sapiens sapiens and that the reason the former were replaced by the latter is more likely to have been an alteration in climatic conditions than a conflict between the two subspecies. I find a couple of things wrong with this idea.
  
  Neanderthals were certainly more powerful physically than Cro-magnon, and there is no doubt that their brain was larger than ours. They were wonderfully adapted to the environment in Europe during their existence and that they were humans. But IMO there had to be something lacking in their ability to use abstract and creative thought...something that was NOT lacking in modern human types. I say this because recent anthropological finds indicate pretty clearly that Neanderthals roamed the earth for 200,000 years. During that time, they never progressed beyond the stone age. All evidence so far collected indicates that they stood erect, just we we do. That they were able to make good, sharp spear points from flint, use fire for protection and cooking, and that they had a highly successful social organisation that included caring for sick or injured comrades and burying their dead ceremonially, suggesting that they had an inkling of a life beyond their current one. All this indicates that they were far more intelligent than any gorilla or chimpanzee and were, in every sense of the word, humans. There is little doubt in my mind that they were a subspecies of Homo sapiens.
  
  However, the idea that they were anywhere near the equal of Cro magnon is negated by the observation that they were around for more than 200k years and never succeeded in progressing beyond what for us was the old stone age. They apparently never discovered agriculture nor did they ever learn to use metal to forge weapons or non-lethal instruments. Their society never advanced to the point where they left their cave homes and constructed vilages or cities and it seems highly unlikely that they ever built ships to traverse bodies of water too large to bridge. They were ever at the mercy of their environment and it would appear that they were as much preyed upon as they were predators.
  
  By contrast, Homo sapiens sapiens showed up about 50,000 years ago and within a fraction of that time were out of the stone age. In 40K years people were farming, building and living in cities, had swept dangerous predators from their immediate vicinity and were rapidly advancing into the Bronze Age.
  
  More importantly, Neanderthals disappeared concomitantly with the expansion of Cro-magnon populations. This sounds to me more like there was a direct conflict between the two human types and that Cro-magnon simply blew away the Neanderthals. I know this flies in the face of current anthroplogical conclusions, but I don't see any other explanation.
  
  Am I missing something important?

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Thursday, 21st June 2007

  While I am following your logic and your points are valid you are missing one major detail. For good or for bad, due to their physiology Neaderdals were largely carnivores - vegetables were just used as salt in their diets (kind of saying). Hence, that limitation of their meant they were more prone to a changing environment. Carnivores beings cannot live in huge numbers - that is a well known fact in life! Hence, Neaderdal societies were limited to the usual 15-maximum 30 people while Sapiens societies (even hunting ones) could easily be of 100-150 since in case of absence of animals they could survive on fruit/vegetable collecting etc. Of course in any clash between these two Sapiens could win by sheer logic of numbers! On its heyday, Neaderdals lived from Western Europe to modern day Kazakstan and as most anthropologists believe, it reached a peak population of.... 150,000 people!!!! Sorry but that could be the population of say stone age Ireland not the whole of Eurasia! Hence, even in its heyday, a traveller would be very lucky to spot a Neaderdal, so rare they were!
  
  But can we say that Neaderdals were not smart enough just because their physiology did not permit them to survive on fruits? It is more or less as if saying Sapiens had their famine periods and died like idiots thus were really stupid cos they did not learn to eat grass and wood like animals and insects - a simple invention that a rather short, muscular and not very clever hominoid had made several 100,000s of years before! Some things are not that simple and really do not depend only on intelligence. Your dog is quite intelligent but without the ability to physically imitate your language and without hands what can it do? Actually it does just fine! Neaderdal most probably due to his physiology (yes practice makes best but this one was due to sheer genetics) had a bit of a lesser dexterity in his thumb and had to use repeatedly his teeth to create things, thus wore his teeth earlier, thus by the age of 35 could hardly eat and survived on the help of relatives to a maximum 40 years old age. Despite that, there are some specimens worked to precision of a chirourgical tool, hence several Neaderdals could become skilled craftsmen!
  
  Only due to its numbers Neaderdal would lose anyway. The average group of 15 could not compete with a group of 100-150 Sapiens! For Sapiens the contact with Neaderdals would be very rare and would only be the food for myths about man-like exotic creatures (that passed over to later generations and come to us!) rather than being the main antagonist. I think that in the cases that Sapiens and Neaderdals co-existed the mere numbers of Neaderdals would not be even a threat to Sapiens to bother hunt for them though of course that must had happened also (fear of the stranger etc.).
  
  Now think of it. You are a Neaderdal, your physiology permit you eating mainly meat thus you cannot make huge displacements in small periods of time, you use less of the thumb and more of the teeth but that wears so you live up to an average of 35, you live in a society of 10-20 people and only scarcely you meet with another society in your lifetime, most probably you have not met your grandparents (usual source of experience and wisdom!)... all that due to your genetic physiology and not to your genetic intelligence. And as we know, intelligence cannot alter genetic physiology on will otherwise dolphins would have made (or possibly are in the process of making) considerable advances in creating a sea culture that could eventually colonise at some point the land also with visions for space later on...!
  
  I think Neaderdal was to a comparable intelligent level to the typical Sapiens of 100,000 years ago; If we compare the Sapiens of 25,000 years ago when the last Neaderdals disappeared then of course this Sapiens was quite more developed, thus presented more intelligence but then if we compare the several millions of Sapiens that walked the earth with the Neaderdal heyday maximum of 150,000 people then we have a picture of why there was that discrepancy. Neaderdal was more a victim of its DNA choices and that is not something that a spiece can manipulate easily. In addition, in cases where there was contact between Neaderdal and Sapiens it seems that Neaderdal reacted by getting influenced from this new strange creature that was invading his region. Most probably he would realise he was left behind in development and was anxious to imitate the most recent developments of course to increase his possibility of survival. That is nothing different from the anxiety of primitive stone age tribes when they met the more progressed Europeans - that characteristic is a strong hint of intelligence: had Neaderdal been more social (if its genetics permited it) it is very probable he would had developed more skills like Sapiens did.
  
  It is also striking the similarity of Neaderdal slow development with that of African tribes. For African tribes also there had been said in the 19th century (quickly after the Darwinian theory was digested) that probably these are just anthropologic tribes that are not suited to develop technology/high-level culture based civilisations but then nobody sat down to think that Europe is 1sq.km with 10 people and Africa had always been till recently 10sq. with 1 people, not to mention that most of it is anyway uninhabitable due to its climate! Of course African tribes had done their best (and created some quite complex cultures, plus one of the largest buildings on earth, that wall in Nigeria) on the basis of their numbers, their climate and what they had.

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Thursday, 21st June 2007

  You are suggesting that in 200,000 years, a human being with the intellect and creativity of Homo sapiens sapiens would not have been able to pass beyond the stone age because he was a meat eater? I find that hard to accept. I can see where living in small groups would make it difficult for them to compete with cro-magnon, but initially cro-magnon habitats would not have been brimming over with people either. They may have numbered a few dozen at most. The evidence is fairly strong that agriculture was invented many millenia after cro-magnon marched into Europe so the tribes would be hunter-gatherers. Consequently, for maybe 20,000 years, of necessity, groups would have had to remain pretty small since in winter, vegetation would have been sparse and they'd have been forced to live exclusively on meat, just as Neanderthal....and lelt's not forget that the winters were extremely long during that period.
  
  
  As for a mass invasion of peoples, I suspect that there would be just as small a liklihood of running into a cro-magnon tribe 30,000 years ago while walking around in Europe as there would be of bumping into a Neanderthal tribe.
  
  The African argumentt makes a certain amount of sense, but let's not forget that those peoples lived in an area brimming with food - both vegetable and animal - all year long. They would not have been forced, periodically, to find means of avoiding starvation and thus have begun to make better, more effective weapons as rapidly as did peoples living in more difficult climes.
  
  I think the answer is more complex than you suggest, and I suspect it had to do with intellect
  
  

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  Posted by Helena99 (U8659848) on Friday, 22nd June 2007

  If I've understood you correctly, you're saying the Neanderthals lasted 200,000 years before disappearing, and so far Cro Magnon man has lasted 50,000 years. My maths tells me that Neanderthal man is therefore at least three times more successful than Cro Mangon man in terms of species longevity, so must have been doing something right. Morever, they at least were only made extinct by another, competing species, whereas CM man is well on the way to making himself extinct entirely by his own 'progressive' efforts (and very possibly taking the vast majority of other extant species with him, if not the lot!).
  
  
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 22nd June 2007

  To tell you the truth I am not suggesting that Neaderdal had necessarily exactly the same intelligence and mentality as the Sapiens (I do not take into account the slightly bigger brain size cos it is not only brain size that does the job), afterall these were two cousin spieces that emerged from the Homo Erectus spiece (and not two races of the same spiece) - i.e. they could not reproduce and give fertile descendants thogh there have been found skulls that suggest Neaderdal-Sapiens mixture (but that could be the Human equivalent of a mule that is not a spiece) - what I am suggesting is that it had probably a comparable intelligence and that given the circumstances he could had made it much better than what he did.
  
  The fact that the very early ancestors of Neaderdal specialised in meat eating meant that later on he did not have much choice on its meals hence inherently less survival rate. He could not live in larger communitites, he could not travel large distances (like a carnivore he would get more easily tired), he did not have the same dexterity on the thumb (that is a physical trait) etc. All these were confining factors not related to his intelligence.
  
  On the other hand Sapiens, even when living with a purely hunting lifestyle had always the option of eating vegetables (and though less in quantities there were still some things around to eat even in winter, e.g. nuts/dried vegetables). Hence after 100,000 B.C isolated societies of Sapiens numbering less than 40 people (i.e. 2-3 families!) would rather be the exception than the normal.
  
  What is though generally accepted is that the demise of Neaderdal had happened before Sapiens introduction. Due to its few numbers widespread over a large area of Eurasia and their fragmentation in really small communities, specialists believe (and I find it very reasonable) that extinction was not one dramatic event but 1000s of small scale dramatic events that played their role so each of these small communities perished here and there. In some places it could be changing climate, in others illnesses, in others inter-clan war that would divide the clan into smaller numbers and individuals (that have a lower rate of survival) and in some rare cases war with Sapiens, but certainly the latter cannot explain their extinction even if it seems that whenever Sapiens enterred their territory they perished (logical due to their numbers and to the by then advanced technology that Sapiens possesed (they already had the bow) but then one may say the same for Tasmanians isn't it?).
  
  Australian Aboriginals and especially Tasmanians are actually a good example of what path Sapiens could had followed. These guys while coming from India hopping from island to island some 50,000 years back, then habitating Australia, getting dispersed over huge areas with little contact (thus actially giving tribes quite varied even anthropologically) while a small part of them entered Tasmania when it was connected with Australia and when the rise of the level of the sea meant that this became an island they became isolated since they did not know how to make boats. They did not know how to make bows, they did not have nets they actially had the most primitive of tools to the point that when Europeans arrived (at that time not very famous for their comprehension of native tribes!) considered them to be in an animal condition and made laws about killing them just as they would kill a pack of wild wolves (unfortunately that is the reality in such encounters).
  
  Now, in the above case I do not see how Sapiens that was the Tasmanian differed from poor old Neaderdal that seemed to be living in similar isolation as the Tasmanian in his small niche societies.
  
  It is also known that Sapiens also existed for 200-300,000 of years and for the most of it (up to around 90,000 B.C.) he seemed to present little or no evolution in tools, technology, society - in exactly the similar manner with Neaderdal. Thus something happened around 90,000 years back and changed the path once and for all. A small detail which Neaderdal had not yet reached but if he would continue, who knows if he would arrive at it? I mean he already knew to do many things. He even made an effort to come up to the level of Sapiens when he met him (and to be honest even certain Sapiens tribes did not opt for that when they met more advanced tribes!).
  
  Now, I know well theory that says that technology was born out of necessity and that it was in the more harsh environments that people were pressed to invent and progress and that may explain why in several parts of the world people just remained in the same ancestral conditions - cos they had it easy.
  
  I am not so sure on that. First true civilisations were in Mesopotamia (firtile land around rivers), India (fertile land around rivers), China (fertile land around rivers) and Egypt (fertile land around rivers) and the only exception to that rule were the Greeks (non-fertile land, small landmass, highly mountainous, but lots of coast and islands). To be honest these three areas were barely touched by harsh climatic conditions and they are relatively easy lands to live (apart the Greek exception*). On the contrary tribes in the colder regions remained for very long in a primitive phase and it was only through their constant contact with the south that kickstarted their progress (and that is true from England to Kamtsatka and Alaska - even in Americas it was the same thing).
  
  *It seems that Greek exception can be explained by the fact that such a small landmass has such a large coastal line surrounded with 1000s of islands (and not by the superior intellects of its race as ancient ones liked often to claim!). Thus the area inspired people to get on a boat and voyage: voyaging brings knowledge - Just see the map of the Mediterranean and try to spot the most likely place for the first real naval force to have appeared, that is hands down Greece.
  
  Personally i do not think it was so much the difficulties in terms of the environment that pressed humans to develop but difficulties in terms of friction between the tribes that pushed humans to develop more. I mean, humans usually adapted quite well in an environment and would continue to live in the same lifestyle with little innovation as long as it provided them with food (you have really excellent examples of that all around the world). Why that? Because animals change very slowly their habits (periodic births, periodic immigration, eating habits, nests etc.) while plants change even more slowly. Hence, if you wanted to kill a lion you would had invented the bow as an improvement of your spear and use the same strategy over and over again successful with your mates. However, if you took your bow to fight against a tribe that had only spears you might had initially some success but you could not rest assured as the next day the other tribe would either emulate your strategy by having also bows or come up with some short of wooden shield/armour to protect themselves until they covered the distance to reach at you and kill you with their sticks! Hence, the first day you could use your bow, the next day you had to find something else.
  
  It is exactly what ancients were saying: "it is not their friends but their enemies that taught cities how to built walls"! Neaderdals had not much of that interaction. They had found some successful ways on animals but had not much of a need to innovate since they would rarely have the chance to fight a clan war or something. Their 'wars' must had been between individuals and not larger groups. However, when Sapiens invaded his space (and by that time Neaderdal was already in severe demise due to the aforementioned various reasons) he proved correct the above ancient wise saying!

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Friday, 22nd June 2007

  OK. That makes sense. Athough I do think that since it's trial and error that results in innovation (probably mostly error), I would expect most of the creative breakthroughs to take place on the largest playgrounds, if those larger zones offered some kind of pressure -- competitive or environmental. That's why I believe we see so little in Europe (Greece excepted) and so many in Asia and northern Africa....and why I'm not surprised that the tribes in Tasmania remained so primitive.
  
  As for Helena99's pessimistic observation that Neanderthal were, by virtue of greater species longevity, more successful than sapiens sapiens, altho' beside the point, I have to agree that so far that seems to be the case. But we (sapiens) have not yet come to an end so it remains to be seen which of the two turns out have lasted the longest. In any case, long-term survival doesn't necessarily mean that a species was highly successful....it could merely mean that it was lucky.
  
  I see the animal world from 500,000 to 1meg years ago featuring several different species of hominids, and it would be interesting to uncover just what it was that caused the demise of any or all of them but one.

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  Posted by Helena99 (U8659848) on Friday, 22nd June 2007

  I'd have thought that 'success' in biological terms when it comes to species is measurable by two factors - longevity of the species and numbers in the population. So far Neanderthals win on the former, but CM man obviously on the latter. (Cockroaches, of course, beat just about every other species on both counts!!!)
  
  'Luck' I'd say is not really a biological concept, although randomness is, eg in random mutation of genes serving as the engine of variation and therefore evolution.
  
  What seems to be the key differentiator in human evolution is the huge opportunity that the development of language afforded for a second engine of change to impact evolution, as in social evolution cf physical evolution. It's language, itself accelerated hugely by the development of writing which can enable humans to 'store' knowlege (knowledge DNA if you like) freeing them from critical dependence on oral transmission of knowledge, that is behind CM's incredible spread.
  
  Perhaps another identifier of 'success' is how much bio-energy flows through a particular species. Obviously, modern mankind has far vaster amounts of bio-energy flowing through it, and therefore occupies a much larger (dangerously larger?) amount of the available global energy space. This 'energy wealth' is both a product of our knowledge-DNA and itself affords us the immense amount of leisure time (ie, that we don't have to spend nearly as much time subsisting) needed to increase yet further that knowledge-DNA.
  
  I may have missed this in earlier posts, but is there any evidence that Neanderthals were capable of writing or any kind of physical symbolic representation of information?
  
  Final point - I only recently realised, courtesy of a TV programme, that Homo Sap is (just about) unique in the animal kingdom by being represented by a single extant species. It's a sobering thought.
  
  Helena

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Saturday, 23rd June 2007

  When I said "lucky" I was referring to the vagaries of our earth or the celestial bodies surrounding it. For e.g. - the dinosaurs were extremely 'unlucky' that some environmental catastrophe happened at the K/T boundary some 65 meg years ago. But for that twist of fortune, they'd be dominant today and we mammals would probably still be subordinate to the huge reptiles. By extension of the same logic, one could say that mammals were extremely "lucky" that whatever killed off the dinosaurs did its job and left the world open for them to take over.
  
  Certainly the world was vastly changed after the Permian mass extinction. Life seems to have altered its basic "plan" after that series of catastrophes. Up to then, its main emphasis on animal forms seems to have been to concentrate on the sessile, or generally relaxed, types. Afterward, this emphasis seems to have shifted to more agile, speedy types. The animals that ruled during the Permian were not necessarily less sucessful or less well-adapted than the animals that succeeded them -- they were just less "fortunate" in that they happened to be around when all hell broke loose. Who knows how long they may have been dominant had those calamites not killed them off? That's what I meant by "lucky".
  
  I'm no paleontologist by vocation, but I have read, and what I've been able to glean from my readings is that the animals forms that represent the ruling types at any particular time generally do not tend to change significantly during their tenure on the earth. The innovations seem to develop in those animals and plants on the periphery of success -- those that are forced into areas that are less than optimum. Most would, naturally, become extinct, but those that lived would be the ones who evolved a means of surviving in the "less than optimum" conditions. Then they, in turn, would become the successful ones who would thrust aside their brethren.
  
  Life seems to me to be following a perpetual Hegelian "thesis - antithesis - synthesis" sequence in which catastrophe (or luck) invariably sticks in its head to disrupt everything.
  
  I know that "luck" is a word that has no scientific meaning, but it does to me...even if it's inappropriate

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  Posted by ungodfather (U2173708) on Saturday, 23rd June 2007

  Eric,
  
  There's something in what you say but I don't think it's as novel an idea as you suggest!
  
  It seems simply implausible that H sap didn't kill neanderthals, and that even low loses to a small and slowly reproducing population would have a serious impact if continued generation after generation. After all, we still tend to be intolerant of other races and are positively speciocidal against competing carnivores - look what happened to wolves. There's still no evidence of actual warfare but I don't think that that means that fraternal species killing has been discounted, it's just that people no longer think of the H sap take-over of Eurasia in such simplistic terms. Similarly the old "waves of invaders" idea about the arrival of agriculture and later metals and even cultures (like the Saxon displacement of the Britons) has been reconsidered in the light of a lot of evidence of continuity and interbreeding (note that there's no convincing fossil or DNA evidence of interbreeding between H sap and neanderthals, though, - indeed the evidence strongly confirms no interbreeding - which suggests that they were fully separate species). War has simply and rightly gone out of fashion as a simple and adequate explanation for change.
  
  Most spp die out from a combination of factors, so it's more than likely that climate change and indeed simple competition for space and resources like caves and water also played their part. With modern anthropogenic extinctions, it's very rarely simple hunting - even within H sap the Tasmanian Aboriginies succumbed to loss of land and wild foods and disease as much to direct murder.
  
  Where're you're wrong is about the 50k years and the "software". Anotmotically modern H sap has been around for ~100000 years in Africa, but something happened around 50 - 70 000 years ago that doesn't correlate with any change in the physical skeleton. There is however a sudden flowering of culture, particularly art but also tools, that suggest some significant breakthrough. It might be the development of a full language in the modern sense, or of the ability to think abstractly, or maybe the two are sides of the same coin. For all their big brains and robust bodies neanderthals don't seem to have ever had the same sort of "big bang" in conciousness.

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  Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Sunday, 24th June 2007

  There was a documentary on a few months ago which ,as so often these days, put the blame on climate change. The theory goes that Neanderthals, eing short and stocky were adapted for a far colder climate that Homo Sapiens. There was also some evidnce for skeltal examination that they were more heavily muscled on one arm than on th eother which suggested that they hunted not by throwing spears but by physically ramming spears into their prey.
  
  The claim was that the end of the Ice Age changed their habitat, removed their customary prey and they could not compete in more open plains with Homo Sapiens as they coul dno longer ambush their prey and kill at close range.
  
  While some of the programme was interetsing, I have to say it all sounded a bit too neat. Global warming has to be blamed for just about everything these days and I would have thought that, even if their numbers dwindled due to changing habitat, there are, even today, plenty of areas of woodland where ambush hunters could have survived.
  
  I suspect ,as ha sbeen mentioned, it was a combination of factors that killed them off, including climate chnage and direct assault from Homo Sapiens.

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  Posted by Helena99 (U8659848) on Sunday, 24th June 2007

  I wonder if they caught diseases from CM man that they were not adapted to withstand? Happened often enough in 'modern times' eg Amerindians, Aboriginese ets

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  Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Monday, 25th June 2007

  The fundamental trait of man as a species is adaptability. I feel compelled to believe that the Neanderthal was adaptable enough to survive climate change. There a strong possibility that disease decimated him but very unlikely, based on immunology and history, that it wiped him out entirely. In such a large population one would expect at least some percentage to have immunity.
  
  I think we killed them all, or helped push them over the edge. An enduring trait of humans throughout history is war against the other. Racism, xenophobia, and war are also enduring features of homo sapiens. I could be, that among all the hominids, that was our evolutionary advantage-a predeliction for killing hominids that are too different.
  
  Regarding many of the speculations, they are fine as speculation but lets not overestimate what we actually know. The whole analysis about meat-eating, group size, and population numbers is highly suspect. The plains indians lived and traveled in very large groups utilizing the bison herds as a food source.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 25th June 2007

  The problem with Sapiens-pressed extinction is that it does not explain the reasons why Neaderdthal was already in serious demise before the intruduction of the former in his territories. I mean HN lived throuhout most of Eurasia but (as it seems) HS came in contact with him only in western Europe (mainly south Western France, Spain and Portugal) that was the last bastion of the few remaining HN groups. Even then their contact had been sporadic.
  
  There is no reason to imagine any different picture from the English/Tasmanians story with the only difference that HS had not that huge technological gap that divided English from Tasmanians. Now if in the case of Tasmanians it was not only the manhunting of English but also the deseases and the decreasing living space that contributed to extinction then we may assume that the same might had happened to HN contact with HS. Do not forget that at those times HS was already in full development (had much better tools, bows and at other places (but not western Europe) was already on primary cultivation) but then even then unless he actually ate HN he would not go to hunt HN as it was unecessary (loss of time and efforts, not to mention potential dangers as HN was good at ambushes): HN were traditionally few thus they would not exactly annoy much HS hunters unless there was a case of severe lack of animals to hunt. I think HS would be more annoyed by enemy HS groups (that included more hunters and more mouths to feed) rather than HN ones.
  
  Nontheless it is more than certain that HS (and HN from his own side) would see the "other" as a monster, as an exotic creature that should be avoided and killed if possible, not necessarily for any other reason than the "fear of the unknown" - exactly like the case where Conquistadors would kill natives and natives would kill conquistadorsd for the slightest "unrecognised, uncomprehensible behaviour" (no matter if that was just a genuine effort of being kind or something!). From that point to say that HS is responsible for HN extinction is way too far even if the last HN man died from the spear of a HS. Yes, HS brought to extinction a lot of animals - in Americas they hunted so much that they brought to extinctions animals like horses (before they were able to learn to ride them) - but it is obvious from what we know up to know that the Neaderthal was already on his way to extinction before introduction of HS in his regions for a variety of reasons, thus HS could only give a final push over the cliff if he gave that at all.

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Monday, 25th June 2007

  <quote userid=</quote>There's something in what you say but I don't think it's as novel an idea as you suggest!
  
  It seems simply implausible that H sap didn't kill neanderthals, and that even low loses to a small and slowly reproducing population would have a serious impact if continued generation after generation.</quote>
  If you'll re-read my original posting, I believe you'll find that this is precisely what I was contending. As a great paleontologist once said: "The evolution of a master species nearly always results in the elimination of the organisms against which it turns or with which it competes."
  
  My position was, and still is, that the gradual disappearance of Neanderthals in Europe coinciding so smoothly with the gradually increasing numbers of Cro-magnon was too much of a coincidence to consign to mere chance. I agree with you. IMO the two sub species came into constant contact and when they did, conflict resulted. And I believe also that the creative ability of cro-magnon was considerably superior to that of Neanderthal hence Cro-magnon was able to produce superior weapons and tactics. That, coupled with the greater numbers-per-tribe of the latter resulted in the extinction of the much-more-physically-powerful-but-less-capable humans.

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  , in reply to message 14.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 26th June 2007

  HN peak (only 150,000 individuals in half of Eurasia!) reached around 200,000 years ago while its demise started at least a bit before 100,000 not to mention around 150,000 (though that can be really general). HS us supposed to have just got out of Africa around 100,000. Given the initially smaller HS numbers that poured out in a vast region and the fact that HN had anyway small numbers which were getting increasinlgy decreasing, I cannot get the direct connection. Till now, palaeontologists make talk of HN/HS contact only in western Europe and have not found full proof of such contact in Eastern Europe and Middle East (if I am not badly informed).
  
  Hence, while possibly HS had been a factor for pushing aside HN and contributing to its end, it seems it had been just one of the various reasons and not the main reason. I do not think that HS would have to worry more about the 10-15 HN in his region than about enemy HS that could measure up to 100-150 since it would be them the greatest danger in all terms (direct military danger, competition for ressources etc.), thus I think rarely HS would spent time and effort to go on hunting for HS (unless they ate them). Afterall humans tended to exterminate directly vegetarian spieces rather than carnivores (that if exterminated would be mainly due to lack of food). Most possibly HS did so for HN but that was anyway a process that had started before HS introduction in HN habitated regions of Eurasia.
  
  ALso, when HS went out of Africa (most well-established theory) he possessed technologies only a bit improved compared to those of Neaderdal (not the case though if certain inventions like the bow were a bit older than we think). Anyway HS lived for countless millenia in the same cultural and technological level as Neaderdal and certain societies continued up to relatively recent times in doing so. Hence, I cannot say directly that Neaderdals had limited thinking capacity compared to HS. However what can we say is that due to his limitations (not travelling much, not being flexible in fingers etc.) he had less of opportunities to develop his whatever thinking capacities. Eventually even if Neaderdal had greater numbers in Europe he would had been wahsed away by HS, no wonder on that. But it seems that was only a small part of the puzzle.

  Link to this forum: I want to talk about Neanderthals. Now I know this

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