STANFORD, CALIFORNIA—Phys.org reports that William Gilpin and Marcus Feldman of Stanford University and Kenichi Aoki of Meiji University adapted a computer model that was developed to mimic interspecies competition to investigate the interaction between modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe some 45,000 years ago. The model took cultural and technical abilities into consideration, and, as the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the results suggest that a group that was culturally more advanced may have been able to displace a group that was culturally less advanced, even if that group was initially much larger. In theory, modern humans would have been able to use their cultural and technological advantages to outcompete Neanderthals for natural resources. The researchers add that it is not clear why Neanderthals did not copy the successful culture and technology. To read more about our extinct cousins, go to "Should We Clone Neanderthals?"
