Yeah, but that's giving our ancestors more credit than may be due. My personal guess is that disease wiped out the Neandertals when we arrived in their homelands, much like the arrival of Europeans -- and the diseases to which they had developed immunity -- nearly wiped out the native populations in the Western Hemisphere.
> My personal guess is that disease wiped out the Neandertals when we arrived in their homelands,
Entirely possible, and not to be discounted. However, disease wipign out an *entire* *species* seems kinda substantial. What seems to me equally likely is that Europe was populated by the Neanderthal "jocks" when the Cro Magnon "nerds" showed up. The jocks whacked a couple nerds upside the head with sticks and yukked it up; the surviving nerds pulled back, and thought up means to wipe out the jocks. As with modern contests between nerds and jocks, bet on the nerds. The nerds probably figured out what the jock food sources were... and wiped 'em out.