Neanderthals' Demise Caused by Modern Human Invasion

www.guardian.co.uk...

Neanderthals died out in Western Europe after a surge of modern humans arrived from Africa and made them a minority in their own land, researchers claim.

The swarm of Homo sapiens onto the continent more than 40,000 years ago left the Neanderthals, who had thrived in the frigid conditions for 300 millennia, outnumbered by a massive 10 to one.

According to the authors, a combination of numerical, technical and social superiority eventually led to the displacement of the Neanderthals...and eventually to their extinction (perhaps aided by severe climactic conditions as their end neared).

Here is a statement that I find interesting/suspicious...

Faced with this kind of competition, the Neanderthals seem to have retreated initially into more marginal and less attractive regions of the continent and eventually, within a space of at most a hundred thousand years, for their populations to have declined to extinction

.

A hundred thousand years...really? It took the invading hordes perhaps 100,000 years to displace their vastly inferior human competitors?

When the Europeans invaded North America, it took...what...100 years to decimate the Native population and culture. When they made it to South America...how long did it take to completely overcome the local peoples?

Any invasion, or mass migration, of people from one region to another is usually no more than a one or two generation struggle...with the stronger forces winning the day in fairly rapid fashion - especially in circumstances where there would have been fierce competition for food and other resources (as the authors suggest).

When studying artifacts, bones etc. scientists always seem to describe things in terms of enormous spans of time...hundreds of thousands or million of years. If we look at recorded history, enormous changes...on continental scales...have occurred over time spans of a mere "hundreds of years".

Technology, especially during the last 600 years or so has progressed steadily...now exponentially.

If we are to believe the time frames prescribed by scholars of humankind's past...humans went spans of thousands of years without making any kind of meaningful improvements to methods, materials, the sciences, etc. I consider this highly unlikely.

And to suggest that it may have taken Homo Sapiens as long as 100,000 years to establish their dominance over Neanderthal Man, just seems to ignore everything that we know about human conflict since we started keeping records.

Here is a possible explanation in the vid.

Humans were hunted by Neanderthals until humans with Aggression and war like tendencies were the few left. Those breeding this trait of aggressiveness went on to exterminate the monsters of the night that so haunted them. Just a theory, though.

I was always under the impression that the neanderthals were already dying out due to environmental changes i.e., climate change, leading to natural disasters which drastically reduced their population. They may also have been previously subjected to outbreaks of contagious disease. They would certainly not be the first apex predators to die out.

Perhaps ancient humans did have technology that far exceeds what we thought they had, but it has since been lost. Look at the pyramids for instance, less time has elapsed since they were built and already people remain divided as to their original purpose. Not to mention Stonehenge.

It's not impossible that a race of humans can go for very long periods of time without making any significant technological advancements, anyway. The Australian Aborigines went about 40,000 years without any changes to their lifestyle before Europeans came. This is largely due to their nomadic nature. Their population was devastated by the arrival of Europeans, but they're still around, although pure blooded Aborigines are becoming increasingly rare due to much interbreeding. Perhaps their situation echoes the plight of the neanderthals?

reply to post by DeepThoughtCriminal


Exactly and also as dealt with on other threads ie:

Dna

The Neanderthals would seem to have been assimilated rather than crushed in any genocidal manner. Which of course would make sense of the timeline.

i have to disagree.. they wasnt totally wiped out...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5e61c3fcfb9b.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by Misterlondon
i have to disagree.. they wasnt totally wiped out...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5e61c3fcfb9b.jpg[/atsimg]

I think the assimilation theory explains things in a much better fashion. The majority of the human populace contain Neanderthal DNA, excluding places such as certain parts of Africa, and this is consistent with assimilation in my opinion. Although isolated bands of the different species may have battled, I think the sheer amount of time Neanderthals were present on Earth is clear evidence of interbreeding, considering war would have wiped one species out much faster.

Neanderthals died out in Western Europe after a surge of modern humans arrived from Africa and made them a minority in their own land, researchers claim.

The swarm of Homo sapiens onto the continent more than 40,000 years ago left the Neanderthals, who had thrived in the frigid conditions for 300 millennia, outnumbered by a massive 10 to one.

Which supports the theory I present in this thread:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sounds about right to me. Mass immigration is the best way to wipe out a culture, nation or even race, in this case.

Originally posted by TheOneElectric
Here is a possible explanation in the vid.

Humans were hunted by Neanderthals until humans with Aggression and war like tendencies were the few left. Those breeding this trait of aggressiveness went on to exterminate the monsters of the night that so haunted them. Just a theory, though.

Not really a theory; it hasn't stood up to scientific scrutiny for an extended period of time or been accepted by the scientific community/been peer reviewed. It's very interesting and I plan to pick up his book, but it's more a hypothesis.