My signature... the explanation..

No, I'm not Muslim. I'm an atheist.

Interesting, Hawanja, but I still can't see what could possibly wipe them away almost instantly. Humans/neandrathals had advantages and disadvantages over one another--perhaps one of these proved to be unlucky for the neandrathals?

 

Well, it wasn't instantly, it was over thousands of years. When you're talking geological time yes it's instantly. But a population dwindling down in just a few generations, that's totally plausable.

For instance, during the ice age it's estimated that the human population (homo sapiens) dwindled down to about 35,000 people. So, you have two homminid species competing for the same food resources, remeber this is before the advent of agriculture (which didn't happen until about 15,000-10,000 years ago.)

There are three possible senarios-

1) The humans and the Neaderthals integrated and interbreed and became one species.

2) The humans, with thier superior tool making and language skills, were able to kill more game and eventually outbred the neaderthals, and gradually pushed them out.

3) The Humans killed the Neanderthals over the limited food resources.

For some reason I think the third senario is problably most likely. But that's the cool thing about anthropology, since we have no definitive proof about what actually happened, everyone gets to be right.

 

option 3 is still a nogo