The Truth Behind Neanderthal Extinction

The disappearance of Neanderthals has been discussed in fragmented, single-variable hypotheses centered on climatic fluctuation, demographic collapse caused by low population density and inbreeding, cognitive and technological inferiority in competition for resources, or gradual genetic absorption into Homo sapiens. Yet these static models do not explain, within a single causal chain, why a human population that had survived diverse climatic upheavals across Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years disappeared so rapidly during the brief several-thousand-year overlap with the expansion of sapiens; why even genetically healthy and connected late populations consistently disappeared; and why the genetic traces of interbreeding remained while their identity as independent social groups was completely dismantled. This paper reconstructs the problem as an “active and accelerating elimination hypothesis” by combining concepts from ecology, behavioral economics, demography, network science, and biomechanics. Neanderthals were not pure predators dependent only on large ungulates, but omnivorous hunter-gatherers who exploited a multilayered food web including insects, larvae, plants, and coastal resources. Sample clustering bias in existing isotope datasets and carrying-capacity calculations centered on large animals may therefore have underestimated their actual population size. However, because the marginal cost of individual loss was high for Neanderthals, intergroup connections remained a loose network centered on reproduction and kinship, while a coalition function capable of integrating multiple bands into a single defensive unit in an emergency did not develop. By contrast, the advantage of Homo sapiens lay not in individual combat strength or a monopoly on weapons, but in the practice of “loose local band coalitions,” in which several neighboring residential bands could temporarily concentrate personnel when needed. This local numerical advantage made the outcomes of individual confrontations asymmetrical over the long term, generating positive feedback: victories expanded sapiens mobilization capacity, while each lost Neanderthal node increased the defensive costs of the remaining network. The paper further examines the possibility that differences in body structure between the two populations - body mass, lower-limb proportions, and the metabolic cost of locomotion - were among the physical causes of this network asymmetry. It also raises a methodological problem: population estimates widely cited in the existing literature are, in fact, results repeatedly cited through a small number of research lineages. The paper formalizes these dynamics as a conceptual recursive system and, together with methodological warnings concerning fossil-sample bias, proposes falsification conditions by which the hypothesis may be tested or rejected. Keywords: Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, active elimination, multilayered food web, social carrying capacity, local coalition mobilization, sample clustering bias, conditional inevitability, positive feedback