Neanderthal Case Study

While climate change may have played a role in the extinction of Neanderthals (Barton et al. 2011), there is mounting evidence that competitive advantage of humans over Neanderthals was the decisive factor. When Banks et al. (2008) applied predictive a habitat distribution model to the Neanderthal and human populations living in Europe at the end of the Middle Paleolithic, it found that a scenario of competitive exclusion was most plausible. These models were originally developed by biodiversity researchers to reconstruct the niche of a species and predict its response to changes in the environment. When applied to hominid populations, the model treats a population’s repertoire of technologies and cultural adaptations as a “species” and integrates

45,000-35,000 BP) can be explained by a number of sophisticated technologies and practices that they brought with them to Europe. While Neanderthals advanced little in the millennia leading up to their extinction, the humans by whom they were replaced crafted increasingly complex tools out of bone, ivory, and antler, made ornaments out of ivory and seashell, and began to paint the magnificent drawings found at sites like the Chauvet cave in southeastern France (Mellars, 2004). While, modern humans used long-range hunting spears, Neanderthals relied on the less effective and more dangerous thrusting spear (Churchill, 2002). While Neanderthals depended largely on the hunting of big game like mammoth, rhinoceros, bison, and gazelle (Salazar-García et al. 2013), humans incorporated a more diverse mix of small game, fruit, and nuts (Hoffecker 2009: Stiner and Kuhn 2009: Fa, 2013). Together, these advances may suggest a greater complexity of language, conceptuality, and planning in human

For example, Kuhn and Stiner (2006) surveyed a large body of evidence from Neanderthal and human sites and found that the sexual division of labor was significantly greater among humans. While Neanderthal females probably participated in big game hunting, and suffered injuries related to this role, human females were engaged in less strenuous activities like gathering food and nuts. This allowed women to conserve their resources for childrearing and contributed to the diversification of the human