> The reasons for Neanderthal extinction remain unclear, but going theories include violent conflict with modern humans, disease, climate change (and an inabili

> The reasons for Neanderthal extinction remain unclear, but going theories include violent conflict with modern humans, disease, climate change (and an inability to adapt), and, as mentioned, interbreeding. A 1% difference in breeding rates over those 400,000 years reduces the admixture to less than 1 in a googol. These K-selective extinction theories are totally ridiculous. We should be asking how their genes survived at all against r-selective extinction. Also, the species weren’t uniform or static. There were huge K-selective differentiations with migration and climate change over that time. “Modern” human is a major misnomer, as we are very different today. 50,000 years ago, birth rates started increasing, and brain size started decreasing, with the last 20,000 years reducing it ~20% to what it was 500,000 years prior, depending on how you measure it.