Did Modern Humans—Not Environmental Catastrophe—Extinguish the Neandertals?

[ohgeewhiz]

2. Probably each and every scenario played out somewhere...

Somewhere the two groups fought and one died off from the fighting.

In other places starvation may have affected one group to the point of localized extinction.

In many other places, we now know, from DNA, that there was interbreeding, and all peoples NOT from Africa today have some Neanderthal DNA in them, so interbreeding happened widely, or at least before humankind moved far from where Neanderthals lived.

In other cases, resistance to disease of one sort or another may have had dramatic effects upon which group lived and which did not. Thus the interbreeding may have helped OUR group survive longer, survive better in colder climates, etc.