Homo neanderthalensis child
The extinction of Neanderthals could have been influenced not only by climate change, disease or direct competition with Homo sapiens, but also by the lack of sufficiently strong and broad social networks.
The suggestion comes from a new study, in Quaternary Science Reviews, which concludes that less connectivity between Neanderthal groups reduced their ability to resist periods of crisis.
The researchers, from the University of Montreal, used computer models commonly used to study the distribution of animal and plant species, according to . This time, they adapted them to reconstruct the presence and dispersal of prehistoric human populations in Europe, between 60,000 and 35,000 years ago — a period marked by major climate changes, the expansion of Homo sapiens in Eurasia and the disappearance of Neanderthals.
Because there is no precise demographic data for populations this ancient, the team used ethnographic information about better-documented hunter-gatherer groups.
These data made it possible to estimate, for example, that a local group of 25 to 50 individuals, with seasonal movements and regional contacts, could annually occupy a territory of around 2500 square kilometers.
According to researchers, neither climate stress nor direct competition with Homo sapiens fully explains the disappearance of Neanderthals. The decisive difference may have been in the way populations connected to each other. Homo sapiens tended to occupy more interconnected areas, often along southern European coastal routes, which facilitated contact between neighboring communities.
These networks would function as a kind of “safety net”, allowing the exchange of information about resources, animal migrations, alliances between groups and temporary access to other territories in times of scarcity or crisis. On the contrary, the Neanderthals were more dispersed and isolatedwhich, according to the study, limited its ability to adapt.
The study also indicates that, under pressure, European Neanderthal populations split into two large groupsone in the West and one in the East. The less connected Eastern European communities will have disappeared first. Already those of the Iberian Peninsula, at the western end of Europe and with better connectionsresisted for the longest time, becoming some of the last known Neanderthal populations.
For the authors, the key really lies in the importance of social networks, a characteristic that continues to mark human resilience to this day: migrating, seeking better conditions, reuniting with family and integrating mutual support networks.
