Then, roughly thirty thousand years ago, the Neanderthals vanished. All sorts of theories have been offered up to explain the vanishing. Often climate change is invoked, sometimes in the form of general instability leading up to what’s referred to in earth science circles as the Last Glacial Maximum, and sometimes in the form of a “volcanic winter” that’s believed to have been caused by an immense eruption not far from Ischia, in the area known as the Phlegraean Fields. Disease is also sometimes blamed, and so, too, is simple bad luck. In recent decades, though, it’s become increasingly clear
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