More and more research shows that Neanderthals were as inferior in cognition as originally thought. A five-year project out of Kochi University of Technology in Japan examines factors that contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals, and posits that the differences in learning was the key factor. Although invention and tool use is normally associated with men in human culture, studies of non-human primates reveals that mothers are more likely to invent and pass their inventions on to their offspring. This is also true in other species, such as dolphins.
Evidence to date indicates that Neanderthals were patrilocal, meaning the females went to live with their mate’s family; whereas early modern humans appear more likely to have been matrilocal, the male moved to the female’s family. How would gender dynamics and kinship structure influence the competition between species? Quite dramatically!
One quibble I have with this article is that the author confuses lack of exclusive breast feeding with weaning. While the Neanderthal child did wean earlier than a human child would, the Neanderthal child was introduced to solids at 7.5 months, not weaned, which took place at 1.2 years of age, and the cessation was abrupt, which means it may not have been done by choice.
It is also worth noting that patrilocality is more common in modern human records and, if humans shifted in this process, what prompted that change?