erectus was indeed present to some degree in Europe (Hublin, 1996). The dates of 127,000 to 30,000 years BP for Neandertal occupation in Western Europe are well accepted however. Natural selection and founder effects and at least partial isolation on the European continent led to the morphological complex found in Neandertal remains. Homo sapiens neandertalensis was more robust than their archaic H. sapiens counterparts. Short, stout limbs increase heat retention while large nasal apertures are thought to help warm air before it passes into the lungs. Similar features are found in modern cold-adapted populations such as the Inuit (Hublin, 1996). Current evidence suggests that Neandertals existed alone on the European continent for nearly 80,000 years. Over this period morphological features developed into what we now call classic Neandertal' form.
Between 43,000 and 35,000 years BP, however, anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens began migrating from the east and southeast into Western Europe. Paul Mellars suggests that climatic changes could account, at least in part, for this migration. He states that for populations who originated in the relatively temperate environments of the eastern Mediterranean zone or southwest Asia, any major episode of climatic amelioration would inevitably have made the process of population dispersal and colonization into the periglacial landscapes of eastern, central, and western Europe much easier to achieve.(Mellars, 1999:496) Whatever the cause, anatomically modern humans were present in Europe by around 40,000 years BP, 10,000 years prior to the disappearance of Neandertals. This time span of cohabitation suggests some mechanism could have been in action that allowed both populations to survive without one or the other losing the game of evolution'. .
Mellars and others suggest three models that could help explain how such a pattern of coexistence could maintain itself over such large spans of time.
