The general framework and the factors behind the demise of the Neanderthals are still fiercely debated, and there remain many uncertainties in the data. While accelerator dating has purged the record of spurious fossils and confirmed the ages of others, it is likely that many of our current “dates” for the last Neanderthals and the earliest moderns in Europe are minimum ages, from the perspectives of both calibration and contamination by more recent radiocarbon. While the Aurignacian probably does reflect a dispersal of modern humans, it may not represent the oldest such dispersal into Europe. And while much new morphological data support a specific distinction for H. neanderthalensis, nevertheless the modern and Neanderthal lineages may be better characterized as allotaxa. Regarding the factors behind Neanderthal extinction, these are likely to have been many and varied, but almost certainly included the unstable climatic context of the period between 25–40,000 years ago. Finally, taking a wider context on the Neanderthal — sapiens relationship, we should remember that these events in western Europe were only the endpoints of hundreds of thousands of years of possible competition and interaction between these evolving lineages.
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Stringer, C.B. (2006). The Neanderthal-H. sapiens interface in Eurasia. In: Hublin, JJ., Harvati, K., Harrison, T. (eds) Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5121-0_18
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