WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP).- Were the Neanderthals simply crowded out by the ancestors of modern humans That’s the theory of a pair of British researchers, who say early modern humans outnumbered Neanderthals by 10-to-1 in a region of southwestern France they studied. Scientists have long debated the circumstances in which modern people replaced Neanderthals across Europe about 40,000 years ago. Leading researchers in the field challenged the research methods in the new study and added that the idea of a larger population prevailing is not new. Other theories have focused on climate change, differences in Neanderthals’ ability to think and other possibilities. In the report, in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, Paul Mellars and Jennifer C. French of England’s Cambridge University contend that “numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor” in human dominance. They conducted a statistical