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Neanderthals may have gone extinct due to chance, and not, as some researchers previously thought, due to competition for resources with Homo sapiens, according to a study published on Wednesday (November 27) in PLOS ONE. Simulations of population dynamics, carried out by researchers in the Netherlands, suggests that inbreeding, small population sizes, and a pinch of misfortune could have been sufficient to wipe out our hominin cousins around 40,000 years ago.
“The standard story is that Homo sapiens invaded Europe and the near east where Neanderthals were living and then we outsmarted them or outnumbered them,” study coauthor Krist Vaesen of Eindhoven University of Technology tells The Guardian. “The main conclusion of our work is that humans were not needed for the Neanderthals to go extinct. It’s certainly possible that it was just bad luck.”
Vaesen and colleagues built a simulation of Neanderthal populations, which totaled between ...
