>But weren't Neanderthals fairly widespread, not really a colony? We have
>already discussed their presence in the Middle East as well as France...
>its hard to imagine the cause for the extinction. Extinction speaks to
>the disappearance of a defineable population. Wouldn't more plausable
>explanations like assimilation be easier to construct?
The american indians were almost wiped out in just a few hundred years. The
war on them was well planned. The problem with assimilation is that while
there is some evidence for this in the traits of modern europeans, like the
occipital torus (bump on the back of the head) which occurs only in
Neanderthal and some modern Europeans. But there are too few traits for there
to have been a huge amount of this.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm