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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Homo Sapiens left Africa in several waves after 250,000 BC and every single wave went extinct till about 60,000 years ago. The question isn't "Why did Neanderthals go extinct?" but "Why did every species of human repeatedly go extinct outside of Africa?" And that needs to be balanced against the nuance that Neanderthals survived at least 600,000 years, straight through the period when Sapiens were recuringly going extinct. So this is a very complex story that we're looking at.

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And that makes me wonder whether attribution of the Bruniquel Cave to Neanderthals is justified. I haven't seen any mention of Neanderthal remains found there; the only evidence seems to be the age of a burnt bear bone, carbon-dated to 47,600 years ago. This was back in the 90s [1], when Sapiens were not thought to have reached Europe until later. We know better now [2].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/the-asto...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/humans-may-have-reac...

Maybe those original Home Sapiens migrants just went to Neanderthal territory, maybe established "homo sapiens republics" (different culture, technological practices), and eventually got absorbed into the lasting main Neanderthal culture.

Just like it happens to migrants in our time, in just a few years, not thousands.

It could be that after 600.000 years, Neanderthals got somehow behind minimal species fitness required to endure lasting species survival, and they were - this time - absorbed by the Homo Sapiens.

I don't think there weren't ancient / primitive civilizations or tribes, it's just that they were fully erased from history as they didn't left any written history or well constructed monuments and/or big cities that we could find after 100-150.000 years (no need of "great events" to erase cities, just build the houses with mud bricks, wait 30-40k years).

At looking for clues about why those initial waves went exting, maybe we could take a look at how more recent tribes or even old civilizations like Incas, Mayas, etc. made it through a couple of centuries, and eventually got "extint".

Some of those groups were surrounded by other tribes, and tried to expand their territories, with different outcomes.

Some didn't tried to expand, they just got well adjusted to their original territory and didn't need more resources.

But everyone in those groups eventually disappeared from history.

Even when the american continent was discovered, the remaining "true" mayas didn't remembered or indicated that those big monuments, cities ever existed already taken / hidden by the jungle. Many of those also, were just found literally hundreds of years after having seen the last true mayas.

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