[JoiDegn]

That's not a sufficient explanation because Neanderthals faced the same conditions but were outcompeted eventually. The question is: if Neanderthals were going to be outcompeted, why did it take so long for homo sapiens to establish themselves in Europe. What changed so that they would become the dominant humans

[Mikeb85]

We do know the climate changed significantly.

Homo sapiens moving northward did coincide with the end of the last glacial period.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period

> When the glaciation event started, Homo sapiens was confined to lower latitudes and used tools comparable to those used by Neanderthals in western and central Eurasia and by Denisovans and Homo erectus in Asia. Near the end of the event, H. sapiens migrated into Eurasia and Australia.

[twofornone]

Neanderthals were a distinct genetic group. There's no reason to suggest that they weren't simply better adapted for the contemporary European climate before arrival of initial human populations. The humans who eventually outcompeted neanderthals in Europe were probably genetically and culturally distinct from those that originally arrived, assuming it took some number of generations to adapt to the northern geography/climate.

[anonporridge]

This is what I'm thinking. Neanderthals were genetically very well adapted to the climate, but they already mostly filled the niches.

Homo Sapiens came into an already crowded land, and had to take time to develop the cultural tools and knowledge sufficient enough to give them a large advantage over the more specialized genetics of the Neanderthals.

[raxxorrax]

I think it is far more likely they got the treatment which homo sapiens regularly gets from other homo sapiens. Andamanese for example are genetically distinct but certainly are homo sapiens but that didn't help for their survival in the end. There probably are many cases like this.

[brabel]

As the article says, humans interbred with Neanderthals to a degree that even today, Europeans have 2% of their genes coming from them.

It's possible that it was the "mixed" species that had the advantage over both the first human arrivals and the Neanderthals... with time, more human arrivals probably diluted the Neanderthals genes to the levels we see today.

[random314]

Alternatively, considering the mixed species weren't able to compete with the later human arrivals, or take over the human controlled areas in Africa - humans appear to have a distinct advantage over the mixed species.

[LatteLazy]

Isn't technology the only good explanation in that case?

1. Humans without tech can't even settle there.

2. Humans develop tech (textiles, fire etc).

3. Humans suddenly don't just settle there, they out-compete neanderthals.

Step 2 took too short a time for major genetic changes. So the changes were behavioural. Seems logical to my non-anthropologist brain...

[raxxorrax]

I could imagine another case were Neanderthals had technology or the wrong faith, were declared witches and heretics and consequently prosecuted until extinction. Age old story and a clear pattern in human history. Being out-competed sounds very unlikely because neanderthals probably were generalists too so at least some would have survived. You generally don't out-compete people by advanced technology. The opposite seems true with modern humans.

[CRConrad]

> Being out-competed sounds very unlikely because neanderthals probably were generalists too so at least some would have survived.

SF author Philip José Farmer wrote at least one novel, I think a series of novels, where they did, and still live among us. Discreetly, on the fringes of society.

[prepend]

It’s a pretty big geographic space. I can’t imagine a religion that would span the entire continent and be responsible for genocide.

Seems like there would be many different religions between both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

Even in the Middle Ages not all of Europe was a single religion.

[DeathArrow]

>That's not a sufficient explanation because Neanderthals faced the same conditions but were outcompeted eventually.

How do we know that Neanderthals were outcompeted? Genetic studies show that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens interbred and modern humans have inherited genes from Neanderthals.

[PeterisP]

Well, as after the interbreeding the survivors have 1-2% of Neanderthals and 98-99% of humans, and none with the opposite proportion have survived, that counts as outcompeting and very one-sided assimilation.

[ZeroGravitas]

Is this just a measurement thing though? like "dark matter" is the stuff that's left over after we account for everything else.

Similarly, saying modern humans have 98% modern human DNA seems a bit circular. And how is that 98% calculated? Don't we share 98% DNA with chimpanzees and bananas or whatever? Is it 99% of that final 1%?

A more relevant example: the diversity of genetics in Africa could be counted as like 20 "races" if races were based on genetics, but instead we generally lump them mostly into 1 of 4-5 vague historical socioeconomic groupings. So you have one "white" parent and you're mixed race, but you could have two more genetically different African parents and not be considered mixed. It's nostly about where you draw subjective lines.

[carlob]

You're mixing two different ways of measuring difference. When we say we share a large portion of DNA with other species it's about the whole genome and it is mostly a statement of how similar the proteins that make life work are.

When we say we have 2% Neanderthal DNA (in Europe, less elsewhere), this is usually done with SNPs [0] which are used as a way to quickly differentiate between populations without sequencing the whole genome. In practice when companies like 23 and me tell you that you are 20% Pacific Islander it means that they have detected a number of single base-pair variations that is statistically compatible with that result, but it doesn't mean that Pacific Islanders and Scandinavians are not largely the same genetically, just that we know some easy places to look to tell them apart.

I should probably also mention that one interesting and politically relevant result of these population studies is that the concept of race doesn't really have a solid statistical base, because we have found the variation inside the group to be so large compared to the variation across groups, that there is no unambiguous way to cluster the human population.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism

[DeathArrow]

>I should probably also mention that one interesting and politically relevant result of these population studies is that the concept of race doesn't really have a solid statistical base, because we have found the variation inside the group to be so large compared to the variation across groups, that there is no unambiguous way to cluster the human population.

If you concentrate on a large pool of genes, yes. But then you might come to the same findings when studying dogs or cats and conclude that breeds don't have a solid statistical base.

With statistics everything is provable, given carefully selection of samples and traits.

[OneTimePetes]

The whole thing is further complicated, by significant differences, being- unimportant. As in- differences of the sweat glands do not make for real differentiation. Different coloured skin is a superficial- unimportant difference.

What would be a differentiator - aka different brain-chemistrys and neuro-types - are non-existent or omnipresent.

Taking neuro-types as adapted to circumstances, the characteristika usually fielded by racists, are almost always a expression of "percentages" of neuro-types thriving due to different historic circumstances.

If you spend several generations enslaved and waged war upon, those neuro-typus adapted to the circumstances - will make up a large part of the surviving population.

Racism causes history, and history causes perceivable "Race" because humanity adapts to whatever it goes through. Given enough "good time" generations, the "adapted survivors" retreat percentage wise and are replaced once again with peaceful neuro-types. Unless, the stressful conditions are artificially prolonged.

[carlob]

Except you're wrong about dogs:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2052....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7605226/

https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1097406

[yobbo]

> that counts as outcompeting

Consider Neanderthals had more sparse populations due to being adapted to colder climates.

In periods over the millenia, mixed groups could have lived without being aware of being mixed at all. Groups with 50% heritage or more could have been small compared to the growth of modern human populations elsewhere, which would eventually blend.

Over 100 generations, this 2% heritage could be accounted for by a growth-rate difference of only around 5% vs 9-10%, which is just above replacement level and this difference wouldn't have been noticeable to each generation.

If one population had growth spurts and doubled over a generation, then much faster.

[prepend]

This would be valid if there were still populations with significant Neanderthal dna. But there aren’t.

Also, population growth also counts as outcompeting. If after thousands of years there’s only Homo sapiens and no Neanderthals, then that makes the point. Homo sapien genes won out.

[DeathArrow]

If newcomers were 50x the number of Neanderthals, then 2% is normal.

[Mikeb85]

It's just a matter of maths. If sapiens were migrating from a warmer climate, they were probably also more numerous due to having evolved in a more advantageous climate. Obviously Neanderthals were more suited to a glacial period, as evidenced by their lack of competition during that era.

[yobbo]

> outcompeted

What would they have competed for? There were few humans altogether in Europe, maybe on the order of thousands to tens of thousands across Europe (I assume, this is not known). They wouldn't need to ever meet.

[xyzzyz]

We don’t really know very well how many humans (including Neanderthals) lived in Europe. We have pretty good estimates of effective population sizes from genetic data, but these don’t tell us much about actual population sizes beyond giving us lower bounds.

What we do know, though, is that hunter-gatherer peoples have very low population densities, and that these low population densities are a result of resource scarcity, and violent inter-group competition for these scarce resources. Other hunter-gatherer groups impact you even if they are miles from you.

Oh, and we do know that anatomically modern humans met Neanderthals, at the very least because they interbred.

[dstick]

This is meant in the context of genetic survival. Homo sapiens were, eventually, better equipped to reproduce and survive. And if you read the article, it mentions at the bottom that part of the Neanderthal genes have been... essentially assimilated into the Homo Sapiens gene pool. Hence why Neanderthals seized to exist, and other species that live in a vaccuum (island) did survive. Many Homo Sapiens today are also part Neanderthal.

[hulitu]

They were not allowed to carry guns. Also guns market was at the begginning. And, i presume, they needed some time to adapt to heavy winters.