Neanderthals Didn’t Lose a War. So What Erased Them?

By about 40,000 years ago, a whole kind of human had faded from the record - after living in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years. Was it the cold? Us? Too few of them? Or did they never fully disappear? A case file on four suspects, the best-supported answer right now, and my own bet (an opinion, not the consensus). 0:00 Who erased them? 0:43 Case file: who they were 2:01 Suspect A: the cold 2:57 Suspect B: us 3:47 Suspect C: too few 5:24 Suspect D: they're in you 6:36 The verdict (and my bet) 7:58 One last clue Several of the explanations here are hypotheses and models, not settled fact - the video says which is which. Sources: Higham et al. 2014, Nature 512:306 - timing of Neanderthal disappearance: https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au... Smithsonian Human Origins - Homo neanderthalensis: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/... Niekus et al. 2019, PNAS - Neanderthal birch-tar glue (Leiden University): https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/... Radovcic et al. 2015, PLOS ONE - Krapina eagle talons (University of Kansas): https://news.ku.edu/2015/02/12/neande... Hoffmann et al. 2018, Science - Iberian cave art dates: https://www.sci.news/archaeology/iber... White et al. 2019, J Hum Evol - critique (Science News): https://sciencenews.org/?p=957763 Pomeroy et al. 2020 - Shanidar Z (University of Cambridge): https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/shanidarz Wolf et al. 2018, Scientific Reports 8:7048 - interior Iberia: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Hublin 2012, PNAS - the earliest modern human colonization of Europe: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Tzedakis et al. 2007, Nature - Gibraltar climate records (CORDIS): https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/2... Mellars & French 2011, Science - population ratio, Perigord (University of Cambridge): https://www.cam.ac.uk/node/26330 Prufer et al. 2014, Nature 505:43 - Altai Neanderthal genome: https://carta.anthropogeny.org/node/3... Skov et al. 2022, Nature 610:519 - Chagyrskaya community: https://sciencedaily.com/releases/202... Harris & Nielsen 2016, Genetics 203:881 - genetic cost of introgression: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Slimak et al. 2024, Cell Genomics - "Thorin": https://www.sci.news/archaeology/thor... (critique: https://www.johnhawks.net/p/surprisin...) Vaesen et al. 2019, PLoS ONE - inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... Vernot & Akey 2014, Science - Neanderthal DNA in living humans (University of Washington): https://www.washington.edu/news/?p=30451 Chen et al. 2020, Cell 180:677 - Neanderthal ancestry in Africans: https://www.sci.news/genetics/african... Iasi et al. 2024, Science - timing of gene flow (Max Planck EVA): https://www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/art... Sumer et al. 2024, Nature - earliest modern human genomes (ScienceDaily): https://sciencedaily.com/releases/202... Greenbaum et al. 2019, Nature Communications - disease barrier model: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Burke et al. 2026, Quaternary Science Reviews (Phys.org): https://phys.org/news/2026-04-climate... BBC Science Focus 2026 - Neanderthal DNA from the Meuse valley: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/nea... Previous case - How Fire Made Us Human (and Why Scientists Still Argue). Animated and drawn in code by Sapiens Notes - no AI images. #neanderthals #humanevolution #science