When Neanderthals go out about 40,000 age ago , homosexual sapiens became the last stay human specie on Earth . The taradiddle frequently goes that they were inferior in a variety of manner to anatomically modern man and just could n’t compete . A new study turns this impression on its head and highlights a serial of manner that Neanderthals were in reality superior . The analytic thinking was conduct by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Museum and Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University . The answer were write inPLOS ONE .

" The grounds for cognitive unfavorable position is simply not there , " Villa said in apress handout . " What we are saying is that the conventional view of Neanderthals is not rightful . "

Their analysis looked at the top theory for why our species beat out Neanderthals . After all , there is evidence that we interact and and even interbred with them , so how did we succeed when they did not ? Most of the mind center around the inferiority of Neanderthals in terminus of knowledge , technology , lyric , and hunting .

What they expose , however , is that there is n’t evidence to suffer those explanations . There is grounds , they explain , that Neandertal hunted in radical , and used cliffs and other features of the landscape to trace large creature . This speaks to their power to effectively plan , communicate , and join forces as a group . Other evidence has shown that they ate a wide miscellanea of foods , displace the idea that a narrow diet pass over them out as food source changed .

The researchers note that some of these foretelling of why Neanderthals went extinct was due to an error of liken Neanderthals to the Homo sapiens of today , and not the Homo sapiens that would have been contemporary to them .

" research worker were comparing Neanderthals not to their generation on other continents but to their successors , " Villaexplained . " It would be like compare the performance of Model T Fords , wide used in America and Europe in the early part of the last century , to the performance of a modern - solar day Ferrari and conclude that Henry Ford was cognitively subscript to Enzo Ferrari . "

While the researchers made a good case that general inferiority to Homo sapiens was n’t the cause for the disappearance of the Neanderthals , they were n’t able to get up with an evidence - based account . They state there were probably several reasons that become into play , such as genetical economic crisis due to inbreeding , as many Neanderthals inhabit in small groups . The male offspring between Neanderthal / Homo sapiens pairings are also believed to have a modest natality , making it hard to sustain the metal money .

[ primary image by Erich Ferdinand used in accordance withCC BY 2.0 ]