Neanderthals and humans lived together in Europe for thousands of years, concludes a timeline based on radiocarbon dates from 40 key sites across Europe.
The results1, published today in Nature, may help to end a century-old deadlock over the demise of the Neanderthals and their relationship to humans.
The researchers used 196 radiocarbon dates of organic remains to show that Neanderthals disappeared from Europe around 40,000 years ago, but still long after humans arrived in the continent.
“Humans and Neanderthals were living contemporaneously for quite some period of time in different parts of Europe,” says Tom Higham, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the study. The long overlap provided plenty of time for cultural exchange and interbreeding, he adds.
Exactly what happened 30,000–50,000 years ago still vexes archaeologists because the period is right at the limit of accurate radiocarbon dating. The technique is based on measuring the steady loss of radioactive carbon-14 molecules in organic remains. But after 30,000 years, 98 percent of the isotope is gone and younger carbon molecules are starting to infiltrate bones, making remains seem younger than they are.
This means that dates for the final Neanderthals and for the first human occupations of Europe have been unreliable, fomenting the debate.
Read the full, original story: Neanderthals: Bone technique redrafts prehistory
