Posted: Apr 14, 2020 7:08 pm
zoon wrote:Spearthrower wrote:aufbahrung wrote:They were killed off by disease, at least in my thinking. My theory for a long time is that they were smarter and better adapted but met with a disease. Some sort of bat-flu from living in caves and mixing with bats?
So all neanderthals, spread across thousands of miles, isolated from one and other, all independently got a disease from bats and died out coincidentally with the arrival of early modern humans?..
This does suggest early modern humans had some significant advantage over neanderthals, is there any consensus on what it might have been?
If I wrote ten thousand words on the subject, we'd only have a verbose pile of speculation.
In as much of a sound-bite as possible: more adaptable technology & food acquisition, more effective social organization, changing climate with generalists more adaptive than specialists, competitive exclusion or replacement, hybridization resulting in de facto extinction... I'd say it's not one thing, but some combination of the above.