Neanderthal Demographic Estimates

@article{BocquetAppel2013NeanderthalDE,
  title={Neanderthal Demographic Estimates},
  author={Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and Anna Degioanni},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={2013},
  volume={54},
  pages={S202 - S213}
}
This article offers a critical review of population estimates for the Neanderthal metapopulation based on (paleo-) biological, archaeological, climatic, and genetic data. What do these data tell us about putative Neanderthal demography? Biological data suggest a similar demographic frame (life-history traits, such as potential maximum longevity, age at menarche, and duration of gestation) between Neanderthals and modern humans. Archaeological data have revealed a contradiction between the… 
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63 Citations
Background Citations
9
Results Citations
1

63 Citations

Living on the edge: Was demographic weakness the cause of Neanderthal demise?
TLDR
The extent of demographic changes needed over a period of 10,000 years to lead to Neanderthal extinction is examined, finding a slight but continuous decrease in the fertility rate of younger Neanderthal women could have had a significant impact on these dynamics, and could have precipitated their demise.
Fragmentation of Neanderthals' pre-extinction distribution by climate change
Inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity might be sufficient to account for Neanderthal extinction
TLDR
Two independent models suggest that if modern humans contributed to the demise of Neanderthals, that contribution might have had nothing to do with resource competition, but rather with how the incoming populations geographically restructured the resident populations, in a way that reinforced Allee effects, and the effects of inbreeding and stochasticity.
Quantifying the potential causes of Neanderthal extinction: abrupt climate change versus competition and interbreeding
TLDR
A spatially resolved numerical hominin dispersal model (HDM) with empirically constrained key parameters that simulates the migration and interaction of Anatomically Modern Humans and Neanderthals in the rapidly varying climatic environment of the last ice age is presented.
One size does not fit all: Group size and the late middle Pleistocene prehistoric archive.
A parsimonious neutral model suggests Neanderthal replacement was determined by migration and random species drift
TLDR
A neutral model of species drift is developed showing that rapid Neanderthal replacement can be explained parsimoniously by simple migration dynamics, and suggests that although selection and environmental factors may or may not have played a role in the inter-species dynamics of Neanderthals and modern humans, the eventual replacement was determined by the repeated migration of modern humans from Africa into Eurasia.
Demography and the Palaeolithic Archaeological Record
Demographic change has recently re-emerged as a key explanation for socio-cultural changes documented in the prehistoric archaeological record. While the majority of studies of Pleistocene demography…
Small and isolated: ecology and fragmentation of Neanderthals
introduction Neanderthals lived in Eurasia alongside anatomically modern humans (AMHs). The oldest evidence of a Neanderthal population was found at Zuttiyeh (Israel), with an age around 200,000…
Ecocultural range-expansion scenarios for the replacement or assimilation of Neanderthals by modern humans.
Random drift with a determined outcome: a parsimonious null model of Neanderthal replacement by modern humans via neutral species drift
TLDR
It is shown that, given that the two species occupied a similar ecological niche, modern humans were destined to replace the Neanderthals even under a neutral scenario in which neither species has a selective advantage.
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