Around thirty-nine thousand years ago, a supervolcano near present-day Naples in Italy dropped an estimated three hundred cubic kilometers of ash across Europe, separating archaeological layers preceding it from those that succeeded it.21 Almost no Neanderthal remains or tools are found above this layer, suggesting that the climate disruption produced by the volcano, which could have produced multiyear winters, may have compounded competition with modern humans to create a crisis that drove Neanderthals to extinction. But the Neanderthals were not the only ones in crisis.
