There is no reason to suppose that a difference as radical as true language vs. protolanguage is required to explain why modern humans replaced Neanderthals so quickly. In much shorter spaces of time, groups of modern humans have replaced other groups with identical biological capacities; it took only decades, not millennia, for Europeans to replace Tasmanians, for instance. The precise nature of Neanderthal capacities and of human-Neanderthal interactions remains tantalizingly obscure, and is still controversial (Knight et al. 281).

While the precise nature of the Neanderthal intellect and human-Neanderthal interactions remain unclear, there is some evidence in the archaeological record that lends support to the theory that Neanderthals simply did not have what it took to keep up with Homo sapiens. For instance, Findlayson reports that the stone tools used by the Neanderthals (usually described as being Mousterian), are more complex than those of Homo erectus; however, they also show...
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