Neanderthals Disappeared Because Humans Migrated To Europe?

Neanderthals or the Homo neanderthalensis have and are still raising questions. Despite the stereotype of them being stupid, they were actually quite sophisticated for their time period. They were noted to have left behind tools and jewelry, to have made cave paintings and seem to have had rudimentary medical and dental skills. 

Still, after 300,000 years, they vanished around the time that modern humans started migrating from Africa. The two shared the Eurasian landscape from about 51,000 years until 39,000 years ago. During this period, they interbred and possibly fought, before one simply vanished.

Now, a research paper released in the journal Nature Communications suggests a deceptively simple solution as to why the Neanderthal population disappeared: maybe it was just a case of bad luck.Oren Kolodny and Marc Feldman, Stanford University evolutionary biologists, started with a model. This stated that the bands of Neanderthals are already established in Paleolithic Europe, and every once in a while, some modern humans migrate out of Africa. A principle of ecology says that one would go extinct eventually since two species cannot occupy the same niche forever.

After hundreds of thousands of runs through the simulation, the vast majority showed modern humans winning, simply because they kept coming and eventually overran the competition.

In other words, our ancestors did not necessarily have some advantage that our more distant cousins lacked (though this may have been another factor). There might simply have been just more of them. They also left Africa at what is still considered random moments, continent where they developed without competition from another species.

Our estranged cousins in Europe, meanwhile, kept having to compete with the incoming population. It was a case of being in a wrong place at a bad time, claims the team.