Cowboy Bob is right. No, not in a moral sense, but in a pragmatic one. Neanderthals were smarter than humans — not only did they have bigger brains, but they left behind better technology (for example, they made flaked spear heads out of obsidian; those things are so sharp you can shave with them). They were much stronger than humans, and had much better night vision — their eyes were easily 50% larger than ours and spaced farther apart. In fact, the area of the brain that was most noticeably larger was the occipital lobe, which controls spatiotemporal perception. So, you have a hominid with the best spears in the world, musculature to throw them farther than anyone else, with pinpoint precision, on a moonless night. Oh, and they lived in glacier-covered Ice Age Europe, which humans couldn’t last a day in without freezing to death.
So, yes. Superior.
The theory is that humans exterminated them through simple persistence and sheer numbers. The changing climate helped the humans too, to an extent.
It’s also possible that the Neanderthals adopted a religion that considered it blasphemous to fight back against the humans, even as the humans were killing them. Sounds familiar.
So someone is “right” on a “theory”. Specious reasoning. Nobody can comment on so-called “Neanderthal” society without having met any.
They were not “hominids” but people. That I can accept, as well as their having been physically stronger than today’s people. But “exterminated” by lesser humans, no. More likely they were antediluvian.
Neanderthals, who appeared around 200,000 years ago, also had their larynx in a different position and likely were sopranos ...
Unmentioned in this study is Homo Heildelbergenis (a very close relative to Neanderthals, or perhaps their direct ancestor) who appeared 500,000 years ago.
You need to take over for Kerry. Israel needs your text messages.
The reason Neanderthals went extinct is that they made abortions legal.
I read a suggestion that modern humans gained an advantage over Neanderthals because they acquired the ability able to organize themselves into larger social groups. Whereas Neaderthals formed family-based clans of maybe one or two dozen, Cromagnons formed larger groups of fifty to two-hundred members. This gave them two advantages (1) they could apply their greater numbers to the smaller Neanderthal group, and (2) the same political skills which allowed to them hold such larger groups together gave them the ability to execute military strategies beyond a simple free for all. In short, early humans learned to conduct organized warfare with armies.