In New Scientist now there's an article about a supervolcano around the area of Naples, Italy, erupting 39,000 years ago. That could have wiped out the Neanderthals except for some tiny bands that managed to survive a few thousand more years.
Good point. Still, that leaves 10,000 years of "lingering" Neanderthal survivors. Plenty of time for their population levels to rebound, no?
10,000 does sound like plenty of time for their population to rebound, considering the huge increase in earth's population in the last few hundred years.
But modern humans didn't proliferate much from 39000 to 27000 years ago either. There weren't many of either group around.
Perhaps the Neanderthals were so scattered and isolated that they didn't keep good genetic fitness after the volcano. Then cold and disease, along with further isolation due to modern humans, did them in. Asteroid storms could also be a factor.
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What About Toba?
Tue Nov 10 04:05:49 GMT 2009 by Ken
http://www.kenStech.com
I'm often mystified by the tendency of some scientists to overlook some obvious explanatory events. For example, about 73,000 years ago the supervolcano on Toba erupted. That singular event almost wiped out homo sapiens who had a more southerly range. I can only imagine that it had similar effects on Neanderthals which tended to live in more northerly climes. Granted they continued on for about 40,000, years after that, but this had to have been part of their decline.
Ken
http://www.kenStech.com
You don't think a lag of 40k years is significant? That's approx 2k generations. Your idea doesn't make much sense to me.
Since humans have such a skill at finding the slightest difference between ourselves and killing everyone in sight over it, I would suggest that humans hordes wiped out what was left of the Neanderthal. Maybe the Neanderthal was what ancient man called the Orc, Ogre or other such 'mystical' creature.
Larson (1984) noted that dinosaurs became extinct through smoking, so why couldn't the neanderthals?
Bibliography
Larson, G. 1984, Far Side gallery
My preliminary observations in the decline of Neanderthals is influenced by the large and very dense bones they had. Large bones are required for large muscles which in turn requires a high calorie diet. It should be noted that chimps require a multiple of what humans require. Some apes require almost six times our calorie requirement.
The problem here is the time it takes to kill and eat this much every day even if it is readily available. The time makes travel difficult. Chimps do not travel far or quickly.
Humans can survive on 1500 calories and travel 20k per day.
This ability to travel and have free time is important for intelligent beings. It allows culture. People could travel and bring ideas about different food sources, methods of making tools and social ways of living. This vital information was not available to Neanderthals. They had to invent everything in a vacuum. This was compounded by their time restrictions requiring them to gather or kill a multiple amount of food that their human counterparts did not have to do.
Their problems were in this order.
Food requirements did not allow them to travel easily.
Time required for acquiring food also inhibited culture.
Competition for resources eventually marginalized them and their end was inevitable.
You don't take into account the fact that our calorific uptake would need to be much higher if we didn't cook. Cooked food imparts it's energy much more readily than raw food.
Cooking is not the point. One group needs far more calories than the other, cooked or uncooked. Securing more food requires more time and resources and limits travel.
The point is we have solutions from other humans available to us through culture. People saw others finding solutions in a larger area than possible for Neanderthals. Our culture is developed through communication across broad areas and numbers. Without these solutions being available to Neanderthals, their intelligence was compromised. They had to find solutions to problems essentially alone.
Try getting someone who has never seen someone else eat an oyster to try one.
Neanderthals could not adapt to change without a broad culture which was not available to them.
Why wasn't broad culture "available" to them? And so how was it magically "available" to modern humans? Who gave it to them? No one did: they made it themselves.
This sounds like you're applying the argument that minorities use to claim they are denied opportunities to 'have' things when the real problem is they can't 'achieve' things. And yes, maybe that was true of the Neanderthals: there was some contact with modern humans but the humans shunned them, which, not by design, made them genetically isolated to the point where they died out.
By your reasoning that's racism from modern humans. By my reasoning it's survival of the fittest: join the (modern) human race or you'll fall behind. And Neanderthals fell behind.
And cooking IS a major point. If they can get more calories from the same kilograms of food by cooking it, then they wouldn't need to go find as many kilograms of food to get the same calories.
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