What made Neanderthals extinct?

[Tero]

Global warming! It'll kill us too, much slower.

[mistermack]

I was on a welding course with a guy whose appearance exactly (or damn near) matched what I imagine Neanderthals to have looked like.
He was pretty...different-looking and quite a few people on the course were strangely freaked out by him at first.

Anything like this chap?

[Svartalf]

Low browed chinless wonders? Those are still fairly common.

[mistermack]

Low browed chinless wonders? Those are still fairly common.

Lucky they aren't still about, or that would be racist.

If there was a continent that still had millions of Neanderthals, we would probably have all the same shit that we have now about all the other types. There would probably be another N word, that nobody could say.

[JimC]

Someone should write an alternative history style SF novel where neanderthals are kept as slaves...

Until the revolt...

[klr]

Someone should write an alternative history style SF novel where neanderthals are kept as slaves...

Until the revolt...

It will be told by cave wall paintings though. I see problems with mass production and distribution.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

I was on a welding course with a guy whose appearance exactly (or damn near) matched what I imagine Neanderthals to have looked like.
He was pretty...different-looking and quite a few people on the course were strangely freaked out by him at first.

Anything like this chap?

A bit more brutish than that, actually.

[pErvinalia]

Low browed chinless wonders? Those are still fairly common.

Lucky they aren't still about, or that would be racist.

If there was a continent that still had millions of Neanderthals, we would probably have all the same shit that we have now about all the other types. There would probably be another N word, that nobody could say.

You'd still say it though...

[cronus]

Neanderthals over-populated in their good years and forgot how to make stuff cos they kept humans has slaves to make their stone age gear, humans who have the smaller brain capacity and larger size. It is the human revolt that led to the downfall of the Neanderthals. A bit like America keeping the Chinese as slaves today infact.

[mistermack]

The estimates of total population of Neanderthals were absolutely tiny. And that's not during the glaciation, that's for the warmer periods, when they had the place to themselves.

They were well adapted to colder conditions, but of course they relied on herds of prey animals, and as the climate changed, the food just wasn't there. You have the ice encroaching from the north, but the land to the south of the ice, even though not covered, was barren and unproductive for hundreds and hundreds of miles because of lack of rain and generally cold climate.
At the worst, those conditions extended down almost to the Med, and there was just a tiny bit of Europe left that could be inhabited.
Then the ice retreated pretty rapidly, and virgin land was opening up to the north, and people from the south came up to fill that void, and interbred with the tiny number of Neanderthals left, so that distinct Neanderthals vanished.

I think it's probably easier for warm-adapted people to spread northward, than vice-versa.
You can use fire and clothes to keep warm, but there's nothing to help you get cool.

[Svartalf]

Do we know that unable to get cool was what got the N Man down? IIRC, some of the very latest habitats where they have been found were in southern Spain, and that's presumably not correlated to a glacial period...

Similarly, a tiny population need not rely on large herds of prey, they certainly were smart enough to be able to hunt individual prey... after all, they lasted longer than us cro magnon have been around... a shame agriculture was discovered too late for them to learn it.

[laklak]

[Svartalf]

too much chin for that to be a proper Neanderthal.

[laklak]

I think he's a halfbreed.

[mistermack]

Do we know that unable to get cool was what got the N Man down? IIRC, some of the very latest habitats where they have been found were in southern Spain, and that's presumably not correlated to a glacial period...

I believe it was.
At the farthest extent of the ice, it reached London I believe. But what lay below the ice was a tundra desert for a couple of thousand miles, right down to Portugal and Spain etc. Which is where the very last remains were found.

Similarly, a tiny population need not rely on large herds of prey, they certainly were smart enough to be able to hunt individual prey... after all, they lasted longer than us cro magnon have been around... a shame agriculture was discovered too late for them to learn it.

There's a difference between smart enough, and advanced enough. In the far north, it's not easy to find enough prey to support big numbers. It was farming that allowed the first significant jump in population numbers.
Herds of Reindeer and Mammoth and wild horses seem to have been their mainstay. Don't forget they didn't have bows and arrows, only spears.
It's not easy to kill wild game with a spear, but with a big herds, and regular migration routes, you could lie in waiting to ambush them.
Especially in narrow valleys, where they were forced to concentrate.
The evidence seems to be that Neanderthals were not travelers, they stuck to one location, where they were successful, whereas modern man was more itinerant, and would follow herds.

I can't quote where I read it, but I remember reading population estimates of Neanderthals, and even in their more successful periods, they were only in thousands, across the whole of Europe. The numbers were amazingly low.