At www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uoca-nwn042814.php … seems like Out of Africa might be redundant. US and Dutch researchers are saying Neanderthals were not less advanced than anatomically modern humans. The paper was published in PLoS ONE and it says what most people have been thinking for some time.
See also http://phys.org/print318081797.html … and refers to the same interview or press release. The situation is that it is now recognised, by archaeologists if nobody else, that there is nothing much different between their cognitive aptitude than those of modern humans. The mystery is only in their disappearance – or extinction. All the other theories concerning inferiority are uniformitarian attempts to explain why they died out and were replaced by modern humans. In catastrophism ther is no mystery – they died out as a result of something happening between 40 and 30,000 years ago (just prior to the Late Glacial Maximum). What that might have been is an unknown – and not discussed by mainstream. Firestone et al mention it in their book, 'The Cycle of Cosmic Castrophes' – but all we know is that at the same time an awful lot of Ice Age mammals died out as well as Neanderthals. Obviously, catastrophic events are to be avoided (in mainstream circles) and to admit there might have been another one (while they are trying to dampen down the Younger Dryas boundary event) would be very unwelcome. Hence, the event will be dog eared as a mystery – and more papers will be written on why the Neanderthals became extinct and why modern humans might have been in some way superior.