Humans today dominate the world, while our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, are extinct. The surprising answer is not intelligence at all.

Prehistoric hunter-gatherer society

Image of Neanderthals. (Photo: Getty).

About 250,000 years ago, Europe and Western Asia were dominated by Neanderthals. Meanwhile, modern humans (Homo sapiens) live in southern Africa.

According to anthropologists, Neanderthals possessed large brains, their own language and the ability to make complex tools. They are also not unfamiliar with other forms of art and jewelry.

Recent archaeological discoveries show that they even rivaled us in intelligence. They mastered fire before us, and could hunt large prehistoric animals such as mammoths, woolly rhinos…

The hunting and foraging of Neanderthals shows that they have a deep understanding of nature, as well as possessing their own culture.

But why did they become extinct?

Group size matters

Rock paintings carved into the cave show Neanderthals performing hunter-gatherer ritual dances. (Photo: Science Alert).

Neanderthals were known to be strong individuals, skilled in using spears, and good warriors.

However, this also makes them less refined . Modern humans have light bodies , so there will be many reasons for us to switch to using long-range weapons, such as bows and arrows.

In a hypothetical battle between two human races, the Neanderthals would most likely win, because they would suffer more losses.

They also had another problem, which was team size . According to archaeological studies, Neanderthals preferred to live in small groups – on average only 20 people. While modern people join together to form tribes of hundreds or thousands of individuals.

Having more people leads to more connections, which can increase exponentially according to Metcalfe’s Theorem . It is estimated that a group of 20 members has about 190 connections between members, while 60 people have up to 1770 possible connections.

Solidarity and group size are factors that help people achieve success today. (Photo: Getty).

This way of operating is similar to ants, when millions of individuals can join forces to build complex nests, search for food and kill animals many times larger than themselves.

Likewise, groups of modern people have done things that no one could have predicted, such as designing buildings and automobiles, writing complex computer programs, fighting wars, and running companies. and country.

Humans are not the only species with large brains (like whales or elephants), nor do we have huge populations (zebras and antelopes can create huge herds), but we are the only species best in combining all essences together.

All in all, researchers agree that it was the ability to build large social structures that gave Homo sapiens the advantage against nature , and overcame other primates to dominate the world.