Cultural differences could have driven Neanderthals to extinction: researchers

Did cultural differences between the modern humans, who migrated to Europe from Africa, and the Neanderthals cause the extinction of the original inhabitants of Europe? It was the question asked by three researchers who used computer modeling, the Lotka-Volterra model, to mimic interspecies competition.

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Among the theories made by the scientists are that modern man brought with them diseases that killed the inhabitants, they just killed the Neanderthals and failure of the Neanderthals to adjust to climate change. However, based on the computer model they built, which also took into account cultural and technical abilities, the suggestion was the extinction of the Neanderthals was because of the great cultural advantage enjoyed by modern man, reports Phys.org.

The migrants entered Neanderthal land in smaller numbers, while the inhabitants were then already an established community. But the scientists believe that despite the Neanderthals being superior in number, the modern man had cultural skills that allowed them to survive. These skills include hunting, settling land and more efficient use of resources.

This advantage allowed the modern man’s population to grow and make them more powerful, while it was the opposite for the Neanderthals, reports TechTimes.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by William Gilpin and Marcus Feldman of Stanford University and Kenichi Aoki of Meji University in Japan. They note that before the migration of modern man to Europe about 45,000 years ago, the Neanderthals had undisturbed lives. But after 50,000 years, they were all gone.

Feldman says both groups have similar brainpower, but what made the modern man survive were resources such as more tools, more clothes and more complex form of society. But other researchers think otherwise. According to a 2014 study, scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Leiden University said there are no data to prove the inferiority of the Neanderthals in social, technological and cognitive aspects of life. They add that the group’s extinction was due to a combination of factors.