Why did Neanderthals disappear some 30,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens continued to thrive? At a paleontology conference last April, anthropologists Erik Trinkaus and Chris Ruff announced they had found some clues: the Neanderthals had stronger arms and they ran their children ragged.
The two anthropologists studied about two dozen fossil skeletons of Neanderthals and early modern humans, all from well-excavated sites in the Near East--the oldest dating from 150,000 years ago--where both populations lived at various times. Although anthropologists aren’t sure whether the two peoples ever overlapped, they clearly had much in common, says Trinkaus, who works at the University of New Mexico. In the Near East both humans and Neanderthals are found with archeological material that is, except in subtle details, indistinguishable, he says. They made the same type of tools, they hunted the same type of animals, they lived in very similar places.
Why then did one ...
