Expert: John J. Shea - 12/17/2009

Question
I just came across an article about the Neanderthal predation theory which states that Neanderthals ate early humans and speeded up thereby their evolution. On the other hand, previous to this, I read about scientists' claims that the Neanderthals became extinct as a distinct group by modern humans either by genocide/cannibalism and/or interbreeding.

I understand from the article that you seem to be in favour of the Neanderthal predation theory. I was wondering what your precise reasons were for supporting the theory(be as technical as you like).Thanks,
Geoff

Answer
Dear Geoff
I think people read more into my blurb on the book than I intended.  The publisher's press release implies that I endorse it, but if you read what I actually said, you will see otherwise.
I found it a fun book to read, a lot more fun than many books about human evolution.  I also said his reconstruction of Neandertals departs from longstanding ones
that see them as very much like us, which it does - reconstructing Neandertals to look like Sasquatch on crack.
I do not agree with Vendramini's theory.  He does use some of the interpretations I have published about Neandertal hunting and about the prehistory of the Levant, but he takes them in a direction that I think is probably wrong.
As a "popular science" book, the book could serve a purpose in getting people to rethink some of the lonstanding assumptions about Neandertals. That, for me, is
its main value, as a spur do discussion and debate.  The problem from which the book suffers it that it does not grapple with contradictory evidence.  It presents it argumen
and that's it.  This is fine in commercial writing, but it is not the standard for peer-review scientific literature. Until this hypothesis makes it to a peer-reviewed venue, people ought to view it as "interesting but unproven."
My take on thisis little or no evidence Neandertals and Homo sapiens ever set eyes on one another.  Both were big predatory mammals, and big predators tend to leave one another alone unless they are in direct,
face-to-face competition over a high-value resource, like an animal carcass.  This is pretty much what the Neandertal and early Homo sapiens record looks like. We  find them
in different levels of caves in the Levant andwe find them in different parts of Europe at more or less the same time.  But the evidence we have suggests there
were never very many Neandertals or Homo sapiens in either of these places.  These considerations tend to argue against encounters between Neandertals and Homo sapiens being
a driving force in either species' evolution.
I think that if Neandertals and Homo sapiens competed, they probably did so in a very narrow strip of territory, in effect, the shared frontier of their otherwise
mutually-exclusive geographic ranges.  The precise location of these boundaries and their extent probably varies widely along with climate changes.
What form that competition took, we will never know.  So, Vendramini is as free to speculate about it as those who imagine
Neandertal-Homo sapiens interbreeding.
For what it is worth, I think it vastly more likely that Neandertals became extinct because of rapid climate change.  Clive Finlayson has made an excellent case for such
a climatically-forced extinction of late-surviving Neandertals in Gibraltar  (see his book, 2009, The People Who Went Extinct).  In a recent paper in Quaternary Science Review, I argued more or less the
same thing happened in the east Mediterranean Levant, first to early Homo sapiens around 75,000 years ago, then to Neandertals around 45,000 years ago.
For me, extinction due to climate change is the least complicated explanation for Neandertal exinction.  It can be fun to speculate about other caues, for what is the harm in doing so, but
but I also think the simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one.
Cheers,
John Shea