Humans and neanderthals fought for 100,000 years

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/neanderthals-war-0014492 Quoting:

Once much of Eurasia was dominated by Neanderthals, our archaic human ancestors. And the extinction of Neanderthals is one of the great mysteries in science. An evolutionary biologist and paleontologist now believe that the extinction of Neanderthals was the result of losing a 100,000-year war with anatomically modern humans. It seems that the expansion of our ancient human ancestors across Eurasia was a result of conquest.

The Neanderthals and the ancestors of the modern humans separated in Africa over 500,000 years ago. Homo neanderthalensis migrated into the Middle East and spread over much of Europe and Asia. According to BBC Future they “They weren't our ancestors, but a sister species, evolving in parallel.” The Neanderthals were not primitive cavemen and women: they were comparatively quite advanced. They were capable hunters who lived in complex social systems . . .

Nicholas R Longrich, who teaches evolutionary biology and paleontology at the University of Bath, Britain wrote in Science Alert that “It's tempting to see them in idyllic terms, living peacefully with nature and each other, like Adam and Eve in the Garden.” . . . “Biology and paleontology paint a darker picture.” Neanderthals were predators and they were hard-wired to be territorial. They would defend their territory with violence, and they would work in a cooperative way to fight off all trespassers. This means that the extinction of Neanderthals could not have been easy . . .

Longrich told BBC Future that “ cooperative aggression evolved in the common ancestor of chimps and ourselves 7 million years ago.” This impulse is the root of all organized violence and war. The expert also stated in Science Alert that “War isn't a modern invention, but an ancient, fundamental part of our humanity.” Evidence for this is everywhere in the archaeological record and in our earliest myths. Neanderthals were remarkably similar to modern humans. They behaved as we do, and Longrich said in Science Alert that “If Neanderthals shared so many of our creative instincts, they probably shared many of our destructive instincts, too.” So, when the ancestors of modern humans left Africa and encountered other species of archaic humans, conflict and war was inevitable . . .

There is a real possibility that Neanderthals and early humans were engaged in violence similar to the inter-tribal conflicts of the past and even present. The Neanderthals resisted the incursions of modern humans into their territories. Longrich told the Daily Express that this “led to a 100,000-year war to determine who was top dog.” So, the extinction of Neanderthals was not fast: it took humans a long time to achieve.

The Neanderthals were formidable foes. This was because they survived for tens of thousands of years after encountering modern humans. They were capable hunters, and they had the skills and weapons to resist newcomers. Moreover, they were stockier and stronger than our ancestors, and probably had better night vision, which could have helped them in ambushes after dark. This means that the extinction of Neanderthals was not necessarily an obvious outcome. We won but not so fast . . .

No one is sure why early modern humans were ultimately able to prevail against their sister species. The Daily Express quotes Longrich as stating that “It’s possible the invention of superior ranged weapons – bows, spear-throwers, throwing clubs – let lightly-built Homo sapiens harass the stocky Neanderthals from a distance using hit-and-run tactics.” Over time, we evolved and acquired advantages that, eventually, resulted in the extinction of Neanderthals.

However, it is also possible that our ancestors used better hunting techniques and had other strategic advantages. Our early hunting groups may have been bigger than those of the Neanderthals. And with more fighters, humans may have had an advantage. The theory that our ancestors eventually overcame the Neanderthals through violence, seems to support the view that they disappeared because they were exterminated by H. sapiens . However, there are also other theories to explain the extinction of Neanderthals, including disease, failure to adapt to changing environments and even a lack of genetic diversity.

I have quite a few Neanderthal variants in my DNA. So it seems that humans and Neanderthals  made love as well as war  This makes me think that they were not a sister species but rather a subspecies.
It is interesting how their DNA is found specifically on the X chromosome and not the on the Y.
https://www.insider.com/why-human-neanderthal-babies-were-rare-2016-6




Neanderthal
REUTERS/Nikola Solic
Imagine a couple living between 39,000 and 45,000 years ago. She's a human. He's a Neanderthal. Their families aren't thrilled with the union, but they've learned to deal with it.
Their union isn't all that unusual after all — enough humans and Neanderthals made babies together in the 5,000-plus years that the two species coexisted that modern humans now owe about 4% of our DNA to our extinct nonhuman kin.

As this human-Neanderthal couple moves through life, like many couples, they have children. A daughter, and then another daughter, and then another. And they notice something funny: All their Neanderthal man/human woman couple friends keep having daughters as well.

That mystery may have puzzled them, and its genetic legacy has puzzled modern scientists as well. While traces of all sorts of Neanderthal DNA show up in the human genome, scientists haven't found any Neanderthal Y-chromosomes — the chromosomes fathers pass to biologically male children. That doesn't necessarily mean the Neanderthal Y-chromosome is extinct, but it makes it likely.

There are a number of theories as to why the Neanderthal Y has vanished, the most popular until recently being the vagaries of random chance. That is, that male children were born to Neanderthal-human couples, but their genes were rare enough not to survive through the ages.

But a study published recently in the American Journal of Human Genetics suggests an alternate explanation: Human women may have been unable, or at least struggled, to carry male half-Neanderthal fetuses to term. That's because of three genes found on the Neanderthal Y-chromosome that are known to trigger immune responses in human beings. Those genes could have caused human mothers' immune systems to attack male half-Neanderthal fetuses, triggering miscarriages.

Even if half-Neanderthal baby boys with human mothers were born occasionally, that genetic incompatibility could have weeded out enough of them to eventually remove their traces from the gene pool.

The paper's authors caution that their results are not conclusive — they've identified a possible cause, not shown it to be the case. But for bemused parents at ancient play groups full of little half-Neanderthal girls (as well as modern scientists) this result might have sated some curiosity.

Read the original article on Tech Insider. Copyright 2016.
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I see a lot of speculation in that article, which is common. What actual evidence is there for warfare between both groups outside of, “common sense dictates it should be so?”

OsricPearl wrote:I see a lot of speculation in that article, which is common. What actual evidence is there for warfare between both groups outside of, “common sense dictates it should be so?”

That crossed my mind too. It's really just interesting speculation, mainly based on the assumption that the neanderthals we're as tribally aggressive as the humans.