The story accepts the current version (no, we didn’t kill them off) which we covered earlier, and adds:
Vaesen tells Cosmos that our human ancestors could have accelerated the process indirectly, perhaps by making it “much more difficult for Neanderthals to migrate among subpopulations.” Interspecies breeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals may also have reduced the latter’s population growth, by reducing opportunities for Neanderthals to replenish their own numbers.
Catherine Offord, “Homo sapiens Might Not Be Responsible for Neanderthal Demise” at The Scientist
Paper. (open access)
That’s a weird way of explaining it, don’t you think?
Let’s simplify it: If the Neanderthal woman was living and having kids with a non-Neanderthal man, she wasn’t living and having kids with a Neanderthal man. Perhaps, if non-Neanderthal men were more numerous, it was only a matter of time and only the usual amount of violence, rather than a big massacre.
We can’t prove the latter so why assume it?
See also: In this version, we did NOT kill off the Neanderthals. There weren’t that many Neanderthals to begin with so they were subject to a number of factors that diminished their numbers even further, say researchers.
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