Neanderthals and Climate Change - a good read

[malaise]

ReTHUGs should be very careful about this one
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/modern-humans-didnt-kill-neanderthals-weather-did-180970167/


About 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals began disappearing from Europe, but exactly why they died out is a mystery. Some paleoarchaeologists have hypothesized it’s possible they simply couldn’t reproduce fast enough to keep up with the modern humans moving into Europe around that time. Others suggest modern humans slaughtered any bands of Neanderthal they came across or infected them with novel diseases. And some suggest that an environmental catastrophe, like a volcanic eruption in Europe, killed off many plants and animals.

Researchers propose a new hypothesis this week that suggests our bipedal brethren weren’t equipped to stand a cold spell that accompanied two long periods of extended climate change that took place around the time the species began its decline, Malcolm Ritter at the Associated Press reports.

So why did Neanderthals die out during these climate shifts while modern humans survived? The researchers suggest that because Neanderthals relied heavily on protein from large game animals they had trouble adapting when climate change impacted populations of those animals. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, were more adaptive, eating a variety of plants, fish and meat, meaning they could survive on the cold steppe.

However, the researchers point out that the cold spells didn’t just impact Neanderthals. They continued to ice out modern humans after the Neanderthals disappeared; each time one culture of ancient humans disappeared in the face of a changing climate, another culture replaced them when the world warmed up again.