Is this why we outlived Neanderthals? Human children had prolonged support from their parents - while Neanderthal kids w

[Warpy]

11. Human children largely skipped the carefree childhood stage

and were considered fully adult at puberty. Before then, they learned to hunt and gather from their elders.

Neanderthals matured earlier, but that's not the reason they went extinct. The problem was that they'd migrated to the eastern Mediterranean and northeast to western Siberia. When the Campanian Ignimbrite Event happened, they were in the area of major ashfall and climate disruption. The stragglers left weren't numerous enough to recreate a stable population, they'd already started to suffer the effects of inbreeding before the big volcano blew up.

ETA: the prolonged maturation of human children wasn't necessarily a good strategy when a group had their numbers depleted by disease, climate change, or just bad luck. You needed kids to mature a bit faster then to replace the adults who had been lost. Neanderthals would have had an advantage then.