Neanderthals and Modern Humans An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective

The Neanderthals were a people native to Europe during the Pleistocene period, who became extinct between forty and thirty thousand years ago. Challenging the commonly held view that extinction was caused by the arrival of our ancestors, Clive Finlayson provides evidence that their extinction actually occurred because the Neanderthals could not adapt fast enough to changing ecological and environmental conditions, not their relationship with modern humans.

Neanderthals and Modern Humans develops the theme of the close relationship between climate change, ecological change and biogeographical patterns in humans during the Pleistocene. In particular, it challenges the view that Modern Human 'superiority' caused the extinction of the Neanderthals between 40 and 30 thousand years ago. Clive Finlayson shows that to understand human evolution, the spread of humankind across the world and the extinction of archaic populations, we must move away from a purely theoretical evolutionary ecology base and realise the importance of wider biogeographic patterns including the role of tropical and temperate refugia. His proposal is that Neanderthals became extinct because their world changed faster than they could cope with, and that their relationship with the arriving Modern Humans, where they met, was subtle.

Preface and acknowledgements; 1. Human evolution in the Pleistocene; 2. Biogeographical patterns; 3. Human range expansions, contractions and extinctions; 4. The modern human-Neanderthal problem; 5. Comparative behaviour and ecology of Neanderthals and modern humans; 6. The conditions in Africa and Eurasia during the last Glacial Cycle; 7. The modern human colonization and the Neanderthal extinction; 8. The survival of the weakest; References; Index.

Why did the Neanderthals go extinct? Were they just out-competed by our own ancestors? This book provides compelling evidence that populations of both species existed side by side for some time, and that it was the Neanderthals' failure to adapt fast enough to changing climatic conditions that sounded their death-knell.