Neanderthals may have died off because they couldn't harvest fire

SAN FRANCISCO — Neanderthals may have died off because they failed to harness the power of fire to the extent their human cousins did, a new data analysis suggests.

Using fire for cooking would have allowed these other groups of ancient human relatives to get more calories from the same amount of food, thereby edging out the Neanderthal population. Over time, the anatomically modern human population would have risen, while the Neanderthal population plummeted toward extinction, according to the model.

"Fire use would have provided a significant advantage for the human population and may indeed have been an important factor in the overall collapse or absorption of the Neanderthal population," said Anna Goldfield, a doctoral candidate in archaeology at Boston University, who presented the findings here on April 16 at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Read more...