Residency: The Neanderthals and Their Neighbours (~300,000–40,000 years ago)

The Neanderthals of the Middle Palaeolithic occupied Europe during the second demographic stage: residency. The Neanderthal metapopulation persisted for hundreds of thousands of years, but variation in the intensity of their presence suggest a complex pattern of population growth and decline, including regular extinctions linked to the ‘small-scale’ nature and comparative isolation of many Neanderthal groups.