Ah, yes. I've just recently rediscovered my old lost slashdot account from April 1999, and I've been alternating between this and my September 1999 slashdot account. Sorry about that.

Whoops, I accidentally posted the parent item as "Anonymous Coward". Silly mistake!

I should also perhaps have mentioned that while H. sapiens was evolving in Africa, with rapidly changing environment between scarcity and plenty, it would have made sense during the droughts and famines for the strongest groups to annihilate the weaker groups. Otherwise overpopulation meant that everyone died. It was better to reduce population rapildly so that the survivors would have enough to eat.

Well, how would you know who to kill during a drought or famine? Here's where language becomes really invaluable. Language developed in Africa about 250,000 years ago probably. And language clearly distinguishes one group from another. Language is extremely useful for group hunting. But it's also makes foreign language speakers seem like animals, who are therefore "fair game" to kill and maybe eat. This process of breaking a species up into tribes according to languages was only possible in humans. The reason we only see tribalism and wars and genocide in humans is because only humans have language. Language is the prerequisite for tribalism, and tribalism is the prerequisite for genocide.

Therefore it was inevitable that the sophisticated language users from Africa with tribal programming would wipe out the Neanderthals.