Examination of female Neanderthal pelvic bones in conjunction with skulls of Neanderthal infants illustrates that among Neanderthals, birth was a more difficult and dangerous process than in humans. It can be presumed that the rate of Neanderthal mortality of mothers during birth and infant mortality were far greater than even the relatively high rates that prevailed among modern humans prior to the development of modern medicine. In that regard, childbirth in undeveloped countries still reflects those dangers.
The fact that Neanderthals had comparatively greater nutritional needs to support rapid brain growth suggests that one of the main reasons for their demise was that they were unable to compete successfully with modern humans after the latter first arrived in Neanderthal habitats approximately...
Likewise, the longer childhoods of Neanderthals inferred from evidence deduced from studies of their teeth seems to indicate that Neanderthals had developed cooperative hunting strategies and perhaps language to support those cooperative efforts. It also suggests that Neanderthal mothers would have required more nutritional resources to maintain adequate milk production to support the longer periods of maternal reliance of Neanderthal infants, which would have increased the period in between successive births as well. Ultimately, the evidence seems to establish that Neanderthals failed to survive into modern times only because of relatively minor anatomical and developmental differences from modern humans rather than because humans are inherently much different from other earlier…
