Lower Intelligence Not Cause of Neanderthal Demise, New Study Suggests Renee Lewis - Al Jazeera
go to original May 9, 2014

An employee of the Natural History Museum in London with a model of a Neanderthal male in his 20s. (Will Oliver/Press Association)

Scientific evidence does not support the widely held belief that Neanderthals were dim-witted and that inferior intelligence led to their extinction as the smarter ancestors of modern humans survived, according to a new study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Instead, there is evidence that Neanderthals worked together to hunt and may have participated in cultural rituals, becoming extinct as the result of a gene that made them less fertile than human ancestors.

“The evidence for cognitive inferiority is simply not there,” said Paola Villa, who is one of the authors of the report and a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. “What we are saying is that the conventional view of Neanderthals is not true.”

Neanderthals thrived across Europe and Asia between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago, and disappeared after Homo sapiens — or anatomically modern humans — crossed into Europe from Africa.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera

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