Although I’m sure there was some genetic adaptation

It wasn’t so much spontaneous adaption…

There’s more genetic diversity inside of Africa than outside of it combined.

Very very few mutations have occured outside of Africa. Blue eyes is one of the few examples, but that was a perfect storm of something just breaking (what made pigment in the eye), allowing for greater nonverbal communication (pupil dilation became more obvious), and being very very obvious no matter how much clothes you were bundled up with.

It’s just Africa is so fucking diverse, that it’s rare for populations to become truly isolated and for the same certain recessive genes to become the most popular variation within a fixed population. It’s mostly just things like sickle cell that provides a benefit against a common cause of death even when recessive and only one copy is present. It’s been a minute, but I think when one copy is the most beneficial is the fastest way to get rid of the dominant for some reason I can’t recall.

So I wasn’t talking about tribes mutating on the march North.

I meant the people who would expand north were more likely to have the recessive traits, mate with others, and consolidate them.

Besides, neanderthals had better tech then we did. The advantage was our faster reproduction cycle which allowed not just for greater numbers, but faster concentration of beneficial recessive traits to suit changing environments.

So like…

We have a real example that tech was second place to biology. This ain’t a hypothetical. You’re right tech played a part, just a smaller part.