Natural selection and Neanderthal extinction in a Malthusian economy

Angus Chu

Journal of Population Economics, 2023, vol. 36, issue 3, No 17, 1656 pages

Abstract: Abstract Why are Homo sapiens the only human species living on this planet? Homo sapiens have lived on this planet for about 300,000 years. During most of their existence, early modern humans shared this planet with other archaic humans, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. Why did the other archaic humans become extinct? To explore this question, this study develops a Malthusian model with natural selection of human species to explore how population dynamics of one group of humans may cause the extinction of another group. In my model, different groups of humans engage in hunting-gathering. The larger group of humans can occupy more land. Therefore, the expansion of one population causes the other population to shrink in a Malthusian economy. Which human population shrinks or even becomes extinct depends on structural parameters in the Malthusian model.

Keywords: Neanderthals; Early modern humans; Hunting-gathering; Natural selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-023-00939-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Natural Selection and Neanderthal Extinction in a Malthusian Economy (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:36:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s00148-023-00939-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-023-00939-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().