Neanderthal coexistence with Homo sapiens in Europe was affected by herbivore carrying capacity

Abstract

It has been proposed that climate change and the arrival of modern humans in Europe affected the disappearance of Neanderthals due to their impact on trophic resources; however, it has remained challenging to quantify the effect of these factors. By using Bayesian age models to derive the chronology of the European Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, followed by a dynamic vegetation model that provides the Net Primary Productivity, and a macroecological model to compute herbivore abundance, we show that in continental regions where the ecosystem productivity was low or unstable, Neanderthals disappeared before or just after the arrival of Homo sapiens . In contrast, regions with high and stable productivity witnessed a prolonged coexistence between both species. The temporal overlap between Neanderthals and H. sapiens is significantly correlated with the carrying capacity of small- and medium-sized herbivores. These results suggest that herbivore abundance released the trophic pressure of the secondary consumers guild, which affected the coexistence likelihood between both human species.

How music-induced emotions affect sexual attraction: evolutionary implications

“…One could tentatively speculate, based on the existence of these bone flutes, that the common ancestor of both species was to some extent already musical 631-789 k years ago ( Beerli and Edwards, 2002 ). However, both species were interbreeding for a while in Europe ( Nigst et al, 2014 ; Vidal-Cordasco et al, 2023 ), which weakens such speculations. The current archeological evidence is augmented by complementary comparative evidence such as cross-cultural studies, which look for common features or universals ( Brown and Jordania, 2013 ), or cross-species comparisons, which are used to draw inferences about ancestral forms and putative adaptive functions associated with musicality.…”