[wildcard_redneck]

I think there were several factors that led to the Neanderthals getting overrun by Homo Sapiens. First - neanderthals, light native Americans, were probably wiped out by disease brought in from Africa and the Middle East that they lacked immunity to. Second - neanderthals inhabited Europe in very low population numbers (due to terrible ice age conditions) compared to that of humans coming out of north Africa in the Middle East and it's a well-known fact that smaller populations invent things less quickly because there's not enough people inventing. Third - archaeological evidence is still pretty fragmentary, for all archaeologist know a warrior tribe of Neanderthals could have conquered a much larger tribe of humans and bred with the surviving women after killing all the men.

One thing that is non-beyond a doubt though is that populations with high percentages of Neanderthal seem to rule the world, coincidence?

[SunkenCiv]

The relatively few samples of Neandertal DNA show up in most people with European or Asian ancestry, as much as 2%, which is more than most of us carry from our great-great-great-great-grands. That means that A) *most* of our ancestors were Neandertal (in fact, the very ones which happen to have survived in the ground) or B) there was no or very very little genetic difference between Neandertal and other archaic humans.

[Bob Ireland]

***smaller populations invent things less quickly because there's not enough people inventing***

But then there is Göbekli Tepe... or perhaps Puma Punku...

[sphinx]

Modern human populations outside of Africa have traces of Neanderthal DNA of around two percent give or take an inch. You need to put “high percentages of Neanderthal” in some perspective.