Yeah, that's right - all those archeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and other scientists don't actually know what they're talking about. They're just pretending they know. 🙄 Just because you can’t begin to imagine how to glean information from pre-history doesn’t mean that other people aren’t quite well aware of how to do it.

How Do We Know What Pre-History Was Like?

Canadian ethnoarchaeologist Brian Hayden calculated a self-sustaining population that avoids inbreeding to consist of about 450–500 individuals, which would necessitate these bands to interact with 8–53 other bands, but more likely the larger estimate given low population density. Analysis of the mtDNA of the Neanderthals of Cueva del Sidrón, Spain, showed that the three adult men belonged to the same maternal lineage, while the three adult women belonged to different ones. This suggests a patrilocal residence (that a woman moved out of her group to live with her partner). However, the DNA of a Neanderthal from Denisova Cave, Russia, shows that she had an inbreeding coefficient of 1⁄8 (her parents were either half-siblings with a common mother, double first cousins, an uncle and niece or aunt and nephew, or a grandfather and granddaughter or grandmother and grandson) and the inhabitants of Cueva del Sidrón show several defects, which may have been caused by inbreeding or recessive disorders.

Considering most Neanderthal artifacts were sourced no more than 5 km (3.1 mi) from the main settlement, Hayden considered it unlikely these bands interacted very often, and mapping of the Neanderthal brain and their small group size and population density could indicate that they had a reduced ability for inter-group interaction and trade.