An ecocultural model predicts Neanderthal extinction through competition with modern humans

Archaeologists argue that the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans was driven by interspecific competition due to a difference in culture level. To assess the cogency of this argument, we construct and analyze an interspecific cultural competition model based on the Lotka–Volterra model, whi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2016-02, Vol.113 (8), p.2134-2139
Main Authors: Gilpin, William, Feldman, Marcus W., Aoki, Kenichi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Archaeology
Biological Sciences
Cognition
Competition
Competitive Behavior
Cultural change
Cultural Evolution
Ecology
Ecosystem
Extinction
Extinction, Biological
Hominids
Humans
Models, Psychological
Models, Theoretical
Neanderthals - physiology
Neanderthals - psychology
Population Density
Population Growth
Social Sciences
Species Specificity
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Summary:Archaeologists argue that the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans was driven by interspecific competition due to a difference in culture level. To assess the cogency of this argument, we construct and analyze an interspecific cultural competition model based on the Lotka–Volterra model, which is widely used in ecology, but which incorporates the culture level of a species as a variable interacting with population size. We investigate the conditions under which a difference in culture level between cognitively equivalent species, or alternatively a difference in underlying learning ability, may produce competitive exclusion of a comparatively (although not absolutely) large local Neanderthal population by an initially smaller modern human population. We find, in particular, that this competitive exclusion is more likely to occur when population growth occurs on a shorter timescale than cultural change, or when the competition coefficients of the Lotka–Volterra model depend on the difference in the culture levels of the interacting species.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1524861113