An assumption often put forward that early modern humans "bullied" their Neanderthal cousins into extinction because they had better tools — especially hunting implements — and the smarts to use them is not supported by any hard evidence, researchers say.
Experts at two Japanese universities who made careful examinations of stone weapons in use by humans from 42,000 to 34,000 years ago said they would have been no more effective than Neanderthal-created tools of the same era.
Those promoting the theory of Neanderthals disappearing because they were "out-tooled" suggest it was innovations in tools and weapons that allowed early humans to migrate from Africa and into Europe, where the existing Neanderthals were simply no match for the smarter new species.
Researchers from The University of Tokyo and Nagoya University say their findings suggest those innovations were not the driving force for behind the "out of Africa" spread of humans and that a rethink may be necessary as to why humans survived while Neanderthals did not.
"We're not so special; I don't think we survived Neanderthals simply because of technological competence," says Nagoya researcher Seiji Kadowaki, first author of a study published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
For a long time, it was assumed early humans living in southern and western Europe and western Asia brought with them from Africa the innovation of a thrown hunting spear that could allow hunters to down large and dangerous game from a safe distance.
If so, the theory goes, such spears would have given them a great advantage over Neanderthals in the competition for food resources as early humans moved farther into Europe.
However, if the spear innovation drove migration out of Africa, then evidence of stone spear points should move to the same general location, the Japanese researchers pointed out.
Their findings, in contrast, suggest that, 3,000 years earlier in Europe, stone points for spears appeared much earlier than they did in the Levant, an area in west Asia that was one of the first stops for humans moving out of Africa.
The general timeline revealed by studies of similar stone points shows that humans were hunting with them in Europe before they appeared in the Levant — exactly the opposite of what should be found if the innovation had been a driving factor in humans' migration from Africa into Europe, says Kadowaki.
"Our new findings mean that the research community now needs to reconsider the assumption that our ancestors moved to Europe and succeeded where Neanderthals failed because of cultural and technological innovations brought from Africa or west Asia," he says.
"We think the causes of human evolution are more complicated than just being about technology."
Photo by Jaroslav A. Polák | Flickr
