Numbers suggest mating with humans might have led to Neandertals’ demise
By Matt Crenson
Scholars are turning the disappearance of humans’ closest cousins into a numbers game.
More than 150 years ago, German schoolteacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott realized that fossils from a local limestone quarry were almost, but not quite, human. More recently, scholars have expanded their research beyond bones and stones to figure out what became of the Neandertals. And a Danish physicist is taking an actuarial approach to the puzzle: Bent Sørensen of Roskilde University thinks numbers may explain why humans sit around today puzzling over the Neandertals’ fate, and not the other way around.