ArticleNature communications2017
A parsimonious neutral model suggests Neanderthal replacement was determined by migration and random species drift.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Understanding Basic Concepts of Viral Quasispecies: From Evolutionary Dynamics to Clinical Relevance.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Archaic humans in the Middle Palaeolithic Levant conducted planned and selective intercepts of aurochs, but not mass hunting.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A simple analytical model for Neanderthal disappearance due to genetic dilution by recurrent small-scale immigrations of modern humans.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Pathways at the Iberian crossroads: Dynamic modeling of the middle-upper paleolithic transition.PloS one · 2025Article
- Neanderthal coexistence withScience advances · 2023Article
- An emerging consensus in palaeoanthropology: demography was the main factor responsible for the disappearance of Neanderthals.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Neanderthals as familiar strangers and the human spark: How the 'golden years' of Neanderthal research reopen the question of human uniqueness.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2020Article
- An amphibian species pushed out of Britain by a moving hybrid zone.Molecular ecology · 2019Article
- Disease transmission and introgression can explain the long-lasting contact zone of modern humans and Neanderthals.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Comparing fitness and drift explanations of Neanderthal replacement.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Skeletal Anomalies in The Neandertal Family of El Sidrón (Spain) Support A Role of Inbreeding in Neandertal Extinction.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity might be sufficient to account for Neanderthal extinction.PloS one · 2019Article
- Out of Africa by spontaneous migration waves.PloS one · 2019Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Most hypotheses in the heated debate about the Neanderthals' replacement by modern humans highlight the role of environmental pressures or attribute the Neanderthals' demise to competition with modern humans, who occupied the same ecological niche. The latter assume that modern humans benefited from some selective advantage over Neanderthals, which led to the their extinction. Here we show that a scenario of migration and selectively neutral species drift predicts the Neanderthals' replacement. Our model offers a parsimonious alternative to those that invoke external factors or selective advantage, and represents a null hypothesis for assessing such alternatives. For a wide range of parameters, this hypothesis cannot be rejected. Moreover, we suggest that although selection and environmental factors may or may not have played a role in the inter-species dynamics of Neanderthals and modern humans, the eventual replacement of the Neanderthals was determined by the repeated migration of modern humans from Africa into Eurasia.
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