What may have been the cause of the extension of the Neanderthal ? Some kind of cataclysm? A plague?
A team of researchers from Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University, Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai and SUNY The Downstate College of Medicine , they believe they know why the Neanderthal have become extinct.
The Neanderthal they may have been sentenced to extinction because they had persistent ear infections throughout their lives due to the structure of their Eustachian tubes .
What the researchers saw is that they are very similar to those of human infants , in terms of position.
The Eustachian tubes of a child have a relatively flat angle. Because of the angle, bacteria tend to stagnate and can cause infections.
As human babies grow and their heads get bigger, their Eustachian tubes they grow, which changes the angle of their position and improves drainage. For humans, when a child starts school, the incidence of ear infections has dropped significantly.
For Neanderthals , the relatively flat angle of their Eustachian tubes it remained unchanged in adulthood, which means that they never lost the potential risk of ear infections. Additionally, ear infections can easily lead to the development of other complications, such as meningitis , respiratory infections , hearing loss or even pneumonia .
Unlike the modern era, when such ailments can be easily dealt with with antibiotics, for Neanderthal such infections and the resulting complications would have been impossible to treat effectively .
Shortness of breath would have been a serious problem for a hunter. The inability to hear a dangerous animal or enemy arrive would have significantly reduced the chances of defending or fleeing, or simply competing for resources against rivals, including Homo sapiens .
Seen from this perspective, it is not surprising that Homo sapiens has won the evolutionary challenge.