Science, Vol.333, No.6042, 623-627, 2011
Tenfold Population Increase in Western Europe at the Neandertal-to-Modern Human Transition
European Neandertals were replaced by modern human populations from Africa similar to 40,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence from the best-documented region of Europe shows that during this replacement human populations increased by one order of magnitude, suggesting that numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor in facilitating this replacement.