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Neanderthals couldn't cope with the cold


And in related research, scientists compared points on the skulls of Neanderthals (red) with similar points on the skulls of modern humans (green) and said the skulls were too different for Neanderthals to be our ancestors (PNAS)

Neanderthals had to compete against modern humans and were wiped off the face of the Earth in a prehistoric battle for survival, according to a new report.

Modern humans were better at surviving the cold and had more efficiently ways of hunting for food.

Thirty scientists compiled the report, which was based on extensive data from sediment cores, archaeological artefacts such as fossils and tools, radiometric dating and climate models.

It gives an idea of what life was like in Europe from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago and was part of a project known as Stage 3, which refers to the time period analysed.

One of the scientists involved in the research said that a combination of factors killed the Neanderthals.

"They were in competition with anatomically modern humans at a time when there was increasing severe cold stress that was not only affecting them, but also the food resources they relied on," said Professor Leslie Aiello, head of the U.K.'s University College London Graduate School, and an expert on Neanderthal response to weather.

Neanderthals appear to have tolerated temperatures below freezing but during the last ice age, winter temperatures dipped to well below that. To cope, Neanderthals would have needed a lot more food than they were used to obtaining in winter.

"The costs of maintaining internal heat production at the required levels would have only been possible if Neanderthals were able to sustain a correspondingly high level of dietary energy intake," said Aiello, adding that modern humans were better at dealing with the cold.

Early Homo sapiens, such as a group called the Gravettians, were loaded with the latest in prehistoric high tech.

They wore warm clothing made of fur and woven materials, lived in enclosed dwellings, and used effective weapons to catch animals and fish.

Dr Paul Pettitt, a Neanderthal expert University of Sheffield in the U.K. agrees with the new study findings.

"[Gravettian] toolkits reveal a very sophisticated range of weaponry," he said.

Gravettians were better equipped than the Neanderthals, who used spears that required close range contact with their prey, such as hyenas, he said. Neanderthals probably thrust spears, like bayonets, into animals.

"Far from general purpose spears deployed in the hand, we now see specialist projectile weapons (javelins) perhaps thrown with the aid of spearthrowers to increase effective range," Pettitt said.

With such technologies, our ancestors won the prehistoric battle for survival.

While some researchers believe that Neanderthals are related to humans, another study published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said that the skulls of Neanderthals and humans differed too much for Neanderthals to be our relatives.

U.S. anthropologist Assistant Professor Katerina Harvati from New York University, who led the study, said that we now had "the most concrete evidence to date that Neanderthals are indeed a separate species within the genus Homo".

Tags: climate-change, archaeology