Uhm, how do we know this? It seems rather unlikely, but I will admit to not having studied them recently.

The other thing to note is that Neanderthals were human. They were a different branch of humanity, but they were every bit as human as our ancestors.

Interesting hypothesis, but I must take exception to the notion that modern humans have particularly big brains:

" The question of why humans were such inveterate traders from the get-go isn't satisfactorly explained. It could just be the catch-all excuse: humans had bigger brains, so they were able to figure out more complicated ways to organize themselves."

Many sources describe Neanderthals as having larger brains than our own, for instance, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal:

" Their brain sizes have been estimated as larger than modern humans, but their brains may in fact have been approximately the same as those of modern humans."

We may have better brains in one sense or another, but as S.J. Gould points out, the notion of a single, measurable, general intelligence factor such as IQ may itself be a fallacy, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man.

Success at overpopulating the planet is a strange use of the word "success".

Rob Seaman comments:

Success at overpopulating the planet is a strange use of the word "success".

From an evolutionary standpoint (spread of genes), it's the only use of it.

A relative is perhaps the most respected historian and archelogist in the field of ancient cities in the world. I've talked with him about the predilection of economists to smear other fields, including his, with their hypotheses. They seem to feel that if their magic wand consists of some economic theory, then waving it gives their analysis credibility, even if they pay no attention to scientific evidence or the historical record.

The fact that economics has a quantitative aspect does not in and of itself create crediblity or merit. Economic theories in general are not at all well-tested by the standards of hard sciences. Economics is more a style of quantitative analysis then a hard science.

I've also observed that when economists come up with these claims about ancient history or whatnot, experts in other fields don't pay attention. They don't even bother to refute them. That should tell you something.

this article reminded me of the thesis in The Story of B, a fictional account of the change from hunter-gatherer, sustainable cultures to the more aggressive, though seemingly pastoral agrarian cultures. Perhaps the Neanderthals were happy to move around, eat seeds and nuts and ocassionally enjoy the spoils of hunting, while the homo sapien was busy slashing and burning and killing off the wild things to make more room for his rows of wheat, corn, potatoes, what have you. It's strange in these days and times to imagine that agrarian cultures were the beginnings of the end--because they don't necessarily have to be. We know that now. However, the philosophical underpinnings, that we can control the earth and its fruits, are hard to uproot within the realities of our present culture. The level of consciousness needed to maintain a sustainable relationship to the Earth and her resources is outside the domain of the "free trade" paradigm because it's not even considered in the cost analysis. Until we count the actual costs (human resources, material resources) within a framework of "fair" and equitable rights (both for the earth and for humans) we'll never be able to make the balance sheet truly balanced.

Perhaps in the case of the Neanderthals and the world in general Free Trade simply means the moral complicity to kill the competition?

Your little story has a few giant glaring holes. For starters, Neanderthals died out a _long_ time before agriculture was developed by homo sapiens. Over 10,000 years before. The amount of time that passed between Neanderthals going extinct and agriculture being developed is comparable to the total amount of time that agriculture has existed.

Your criticisms of Free Trade would be more compelling if you didn't make yourself seem too muddle-headed to be bothered with the facts.

I tend to think that Neanderthals disappeared through wars with Sapiens.

If you look at the history of war, battles to extermination disappeared only in the last few hundred years. Many historical records of battles describe every single human on the enemy side being killed. The Mongols did it in the 1200's, the Hawaiians in the 1600's, and Numbers 31 in the Bible describes the Jews doing it to the Midianites - the virgin females were kept as slaves, the rest were all captured and executed, and all the cattle were stolen by the invaders.

You can see it today in war rhetoric. The Palestinians want to eliminate Israel, the Isralis want to eliminate Hezbolla (neither will happen). The NeoCons can't understand why the overamped US Military can't solve the Iraq problem by just blowing away everybody. They wanted to take Vietnam and "nuke them back to the stone age". But modern communications make these acts public and the blowback makes it prohibitive.

Back in the bad old days, armies could exterminate in total secrecy, with nobody left to tell the tale from the loser's perspective. I assume this is what happened to the Neanderthals, one tribe at a time.

The sudden disappearance of Neanderthals puts me in mind of people of the Americas who took a brutal blow upon the arrival of Europeans--because of disease. The European lifestyle of crowded contamination; early humans with their developing reliance on raw animal flesh; both had the ability to make and develop resistances to all kinds of infections. I just wouldn't count on warfare if disease could have done the same thing.

First of all, the Neanderthals didn't disappear that suddenly. They coexisted with modern human for as long as 10,000 years in some places. Pretty roughly speaking, that's the length of time modern humans have had agriculture and anything like civilization. It's a long time.

Also, I'm not sure what you're suggesting about how our diseases would have wiped out Neanderthals. They weren't vegetarians, and we were not then living in large or dense groups.