The Fate of the Neandertals

Abstract

The fate of the Neandertals is the oldest debate in paleoanthropology and one of the longest, most contentious in science. Here I present my perspective on the biological distinction of Neandertals and their role in the emergence of modern people in Europe and the circum-Mediterranean. Neandertals were highly adapted to life in the cold, demanding realm of Europe during the later Pleistocene. This adaptation was strongly biological, and it came at a high energetic price—a price that negatively affected Neandertal reproduction and ultimately resulted in their “extinction.” The word “extinction” is in quotes because Neandertals did not go extinct in the classic sense. Rather, both morphological and genetic evidence demonstrate a relatively small, but certainly not insignificant, contribution by them to the earliest modern populations that migrated into their range. From my perspective, the current data best support the assimilation model of modern human origins, first formally presented by two of my graduate students and me almost 25 years ago (Smith et al. 1989), to explain Neandertal–early modern population dynamics. I present an update of that argument here. Also I present my views on why it took modern people so long to establish themselves in Europe and what all this means for the study of biological race in humans.