Interesting. Perhaps I was giving them the benefit of the doubt in terms of intelligence. In a way buying into the idea that “Human nature” made our ancestors destructive and genocidal to some extent. Reality is probably not anywhere near as extreme.
Pretty much. We were still in extremely early tribal and nomad societies, so there was hardly any concerted effort to exterminate the Neanderthal. They simply could not outcompete their evolutionary cousins in a few mental aspects, and that’s all it took for them to wither away over thousands of years.
Interesting. Perhaps I was giving them the benefit of the doubt in terms of intelligence. In a way buying into the idea that “Human nature” made our ancestors destructive and genocidal to some extent. Reality is probably not anywhere near as extreme.
Pretty much. We were still in extremely early tribal and nomad societies, so there was hardly any concerted effort to exterminate the Neanderthal. They simply could not outcompete their evolutionary cousins in a few mental aspects, and that’s all it took for them to wither away over thousands of years.