The Six Inches That Separated Us From The Neanderthals

Imagine being so dumb, it’s the reason you’re alive today. not street smart dumb. evolutionarily, catastrophically dumb. and somewhere nearby, something smarter, stronger, and bigger-brained than you went extinct.

the 6 inches that separated us from neanderthals is not a story about intelligence. neanderthals had bigger brains, thicker bones, and a hunting strategy that kept them alive through ice ages for three hundred thousand years. homo sapiens had none of those advantages. what we had was a small, lightweight thrown spear point, roughly six inches long, that let us hunt from a safe distance instead of wrestling animals up close. that single difference meant we could fail safely, try again, travel further, eat almost anything, and spread ideas between scattered groups. neanderthals perfected one brutal, narrow strategy. we never stopped adapting. when the climate turned, one of those approaches held up. the other didn’t.

Why Homo Sapiens Survived and Neanderthals Went Extinct.

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