Culture gave humans edge over Neanderthals

Cultural domination
While this research does not settle the question of what differentiates modern humans and Neanderthals, it may help point scientists toward a better understanding of how modern humans ended up dominating, Weaver said.

"One reason why modern humans might have been able to replace Neanderthals has to do with behavior," Weaver said. "They gained new cultural abilities that allowed them to better exploit their environments and out-compete groups like Neanderthals. Those abilities probably have nothing to do with cranial form. They could be cultural, or they could be changes happening in the structure of the brain. It's unclear which explanation is correct."

Archaeologists have found evidence that big changes occurred in human society around the time Neanderthals disappeared. They've discovered cave paintings, rock art and beads dating from after 50,000 years ago, where before then there was limited evidence of these.

"Art is an indicator of humans' ability to innovate," Weaver said. "Once you have the ability to build on the innovations other people have made, technology changes very rapidly. This would allow humans to be very successful and to spread around the planet."

Football game
Some researchers dispute the idea that modern humans had any kind of innate advantage.

Trinkaus says he has not seen evidence of any kind of difference, either biological or social, between humans and Neanderthals.

"When we look at the archaeology, there's essentially no difference in their implied social sophistication," he said. "They use the same kinds of tools, they're all burying their dead, they're all using body decorations of some form or another. They were equally effective at hunting animals. In anything that we can measure, there's very little difference between Neanderthal and modern humans 50,000 to 100,000 years ago."

Trinkaus said the reason modern humans flourished and Neanderthals didn't may have just been luck.

"Somebody once compared it to a football game," he said. "They just happened to win this week. Why, in more recent time periods, do you have some groups of humans with certain cultural advances who displace others? It's happened many times. There's nothing biologically superior about one group versus the other."

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