Why Neanderthals went extinct 💀

Morning Homo Neanderthalensis

This is ooga:

She's a Neanderthal.

One of those weird non-humans that existed tens of thousands of years ago, mostly around what is now Europe.

But here's the thing… 

For some reason, about 37,000 years ago, Ooga and all her neanderthal homies VANISHED!

Completely disappearing from any archeological record.

So… where'd they go?

Take us back to Europe like 40,000 years ago.

At the time, you've got a bunch of Neanderthals living in Europe, running around, stabbing animals with spears and eating them.

You know, neanderthal stuff.

What many people think happened is that homo sapiens (us) came up from Africa and fought these neanderthals.

 And because we’re just SO much smarter, we obviously won!

Trouble is? 

This is… kinda wrong.

First of all, have you SEEN how buff they are?

 They’d wreck us in hand to hand combat…

 The REAL reason the neanderthals went extinct probably something kinda boring…

Yeah, about 50 ish thousand years ago, Europe's climate was a bit… all over the place.

Sometimes it would be a nice warmer climate like ours today:

And other times it would randomly freeze over for like a thousand years.

Not good.

Especially not good for the Neanderthals cause for some reason kinda sucked at adapting, unlike humans.

So whenever one of these cold spells would come around…

Loads of them would just die off.

So, here's what probably happened:

After one of these cold periods, neanderthal populations were struggling a bit.

Then our human asses came up from Africa…

And started competing with these remaining neanderthals for food.

And because we are much better adapters than Neanderthals we thrived…

Whatever the temperature!

And so, the remaining neanderthals either died off, or… they joined the humans.

(that's where we get our 2% neanderthal DNA from)

If you can’t beat em… join em!

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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