The Mammoth Steppe in Relation to the Fate of Modern Humans and Neanderthals

Abstract

The displacement of a settled population of humans by an invading one has been all too common, and the displacement of Neanderthals by modern human beings in the Upper Paleolithic is merely one such example, albeit an unusual one. This research is thus illustrative of the systematic violence that permeates all cultures, an example of what Turpin and Kurtz (1997) have termed the “web of violence.” Why did it take so very long for moderns to dominate in this web of violence? Neanderthals went extinct with the colonization of Europe by Aurignacian people, although Neanderthals and moderns had been in at least periodic contact for over 130, 000 years, stretching from the Riss glaciation (Marine Isotope Stage 6) to the middle of the Würm glaciation (MIS 4) (Franciscus and Holliday 2013:45-88).