Abstract Anatomically Modern Humans are the sole survivor of a group of hominins that inhabited our planet during the last ice age and that included, among others, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisova, and Homo erectus. Whether previous hominin extinctions were triggered by external factors, such as abrupt climate change, volcanic eruptions or whether competition and interbreeding played major roles in their demise still remains unresolved. Here I present a spatially resolved numerical hominin dispersal model (HDM) with empirically constrained key parameters that simulates the migration and interaction of Anatomically Modern Humans and Neanderthals in the rapidly varying climatic environment of the last ice age. The model simulations document that rapid temperature and vegetation changes associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events were not major drivers of global Neanderthal extinction between 50 and 35 thousand years ago, but played important roles regionally, in particular over northern Europe. According to a series of parameter sensitivity experiments conducted with the HDM, a realistic extinction of the Neanderthal population can only be simulated when Homo sapiens is chosen to be considerably more effective in exploiting scarce glacial food resources as compared to Neanderthals.

中文翻译：

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量化尼安德特人灭绝的潜在原因：突然的气候变化与竞争和杂交

摘要 解剖学上的现代人类是上一个冰河时代居住在我们星球上的一群人类的唯一幸存者，其中包括尼安德特人、丹尼索娃和直立人。之前的人类灭绝是否是由外部因素引发的，例如气候突然变化、火山爆发，或者竞争和杂交是否在它们的消亡中发挥了主要作用，仍然没有得到解决。在这里，我提出了一个空间解析的数值人类扩散模型 (HDM)，其关键参数受经验约束，模拟解剖学上现代人类和尼安德特人在上一个冰河时代迅速变化的气候环境中的迁移和相互作用。模型模拟记录了与 Dansgaard-Oeschger 事件相关的快速温度和植被变化并不是 50 到 35000 年前全球尼安德特人灭绝的主要驱动因素，但在区域内，尤其是在北欧地区发挥了重要作用。根据使用 HDM 进行的一系列参数敏感性实验，只有当智人被选为比尼安德特人更有效地利用稀缺的冰川食物资源时，才能模拟尼安德特人种群的现实灭绝。