Adaptive Cultural Divergence in Pleistocene Hominins: Ecological Specialization, Cultural Plasticity, and the Changing Relative Fitness of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens Strategies

This paper introduces the Adaptive Cultural Divergence Hypothesis (ACDH), a theoretical framework for examining whether differing cultural responses to ecological uncertainty may have shaped the Late Pleistocene interaction between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Rather than treating Neanderthal disappearance as evidence of cultural, cognitive, or technological inferiority, the paper proposes that Neanderthal populations may have developed highly effective ecological-cultural systems optimized around recurring regional landscapes, resource distributions, mobility routes, prey behavior, and raw-material procurement. In contrast, expanding Homo sapiens populations may have possessed comparatively greater ecological plasticity. cultural mechanisms enabling broader niche occupation, strategic reorganization, technological adaptation, social connectivity, and eventually more intensive forms of human niche construction. The ACDH argues that specialization and flexibility are not inherently superior or inferior adaptive strategies. Landscape-centered specialization can provide exceptional efficiency under relatively recurring environmental conditions. However, when environmental change redistributes resources, fragments habitats, disrupts mobility routes, or increases demographic pressure, the relative advantage of a highly specialized adaptive system may decline. Under these circumstances, populations with broader cultural flexibility and stronger intergroup connectivity may gain a demographic advantage. The hypothesis does not claim that Neanderthals were behaviorally static, unable to adapt, cognitively inferior, or uniformly specialized. Nor does it argue that agriculture caused Neanderthal extinction. Instead, it offers a testable synthesis linking archaeological evidence of Neanderthal mobility and landscape knowledge with research on Homo sapiens ecological breadth, human niche construction, demographic fragmentation, climatic instability, and interspecies interaction. The paper proposes falsifiable archaeological predictions concerning: Relationships among Neanderthal mobility, prey use, raw-material procurement, seasonal occupation, and ecological zones Cultural and subsistence reorganization during periods of environmental disruption Comparative ecological niche breadth and adaptive flexibility in Neanderthal and Homo sapiens populations Regional variation in Neanderthal persistence The interaction of ecological contraction, demographic fragmentation, population connectivity, and Homo sapiens expansion The ACDH is presented as a theoretical proposition for future archaeological, paleoecological, demographic, and comparative research not as a demonstrated single-cause explanation for Neanderthal disappearance.