A new theory of the disappearance of the Neanderthals was put forward by Spanish scientists. In their opinion, modern man simply ate his closest kindred species.
“With the exception of Africa, on other continents, Homo sapiens can be viewed as an invasive, alien species,” said researchers Polycarp Hortola and Bienvenido Martinez-Navarro of the University of Tarragona. In their opinion, Homo sapiens, populating Europe and Asia, constantly came across Neanderthals, whom he considered as competitors and a source of food.
“We believe that modern man, who occupied the same ecological niche as the Neanderthals, directly competed with them in the fight for food and other natural resources,” the scientists explained.
At the same time, Spanish researchers admitted that they do not yet have any proof of their theory. “The only way to prove this is to find human teeth marks on the bones of Neanderthals, or amulets made from those bones,” they explained.
According to the existing official version, the Neanderthals living in the caves died out about 37 thousand years ago due to changes in climatic conditions and displacement by modern humans. It is believed that directly from the Neanderthals descend from 1% to 4% of the ancestors of people living on Earth now. However, with chimpanzees in today's people, 97 of the most important genes coincide by 99.4%.
Earlier, a group of scientists from Denmark, Spain, Sweden and the United States stated that modern man may not be involved in the extinction of the Neanderthals. Experts studied the DNA of the remains of human ancestors and found that they died out about 50 thousand years ago, that is, 10 thousand years before Homo sapiens came to their habitat.
More recently, more accurate radiocarbon analysis methods have allowed scientists to overestimate the age of 200 Neanderthal bones found in the Iberian Peninsula. The results of their research confirmed that this type of people died out much earlier than modern man appeared.
Scientists have found that Homo sapiens came to Europe 45 thousand years ago. The date of the final extinction of the Neanderthals was estimated at 28 thousand years ago, but now this figure has been adjusted to 50 thousand years.
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