How different the world would look now if Neanderthals had won

[stopdiggin]

12. interesting. intriguing. but have to say also fairly speculative.

genetic changes that led to social behaviors - that led in turn to increased populations and densities? Isn't just as likely that the population increases came first - and that social cohesion developed as a result? Sapiens had an inherent 'herd' instinct, that neanderthalensis somehow lacked? Neanderthal more wary, sapiens more 'tolerant?' Evidence?

What we really know is that homo sapiens 'replaced' neanderthal - and we're not even entirely sure that this was by 'out competing' them, with some combination of superior skills, intelligence or adaptation - deliberate extermination (as somewhat common among species competing for resource and territory) - or whether neanderthal, as some evidence suggests, might not have been in the end stages of a natural decline and extinction, when sapiens arrived on the scene.