Free trade may have finished off Neanderthals

I shudder to think what extraoplations businessmen and politicians are going to make from this New Scientist article:

Modern humans may have driven Neanderthals to extinction 30,000 years ago because Homo sapiens unlocked the secrets of free trade, say a group of US and Dutch economists. The theory could shed new light on the mysterious and sudden demise of the Neanderthals after over 260,000 years of healthy survival.

I shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an April Fool’s prank, I suppose.