In the Grotto Mandrin in France, researchers have discovered remains of modern humans in an approximately 54,000-year-old excavation layer – this is one of the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe. But the find has another special feature: the remains of modern humans were found between layers containing Neanderthal fossils. This suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in Europe during this period and took turns inhabiting the cave. However, the excavations do not provide any indication of a cultural exchange.
Homo sapiens evolved in Africa more than 300,000 years ago. The oldest evidence of modern humans outside of Africa is dated to be around 210,000 years old and comes from Greece. But while our ancestors subsequently spread widely in Asia, evidence in Europe is scarce. Apart from the find in Greece, the earliest relics of modern humans in Europe are attested to around 44,000 years ago. Many scientists assume that the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe at the time, initially pushed out modern humans before they died out themselves a good 30,000 years ago.
Modern humans in Europe 54,000 years ago
Findings, however, suggest that the two human species occurred at least in some regions at the same time. They could therefore have coexisted for thousands of years. A team led by Ludovic Slimak from the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès in France is now providing further evidence of this: During excavations in the French cave Mandrin, they found fossilized remains and tools of modern humans between layers of Neanderthal fossils.
“Our finds show that during the last millennia of Neanderthal existence, settlement of the site by Neanderthals and modern humans took place alternately,” the researchers write. “We document at least four alternating phases of repression. Neanderthals inhabited the area around Mandrin until around 54,000 years ago, when they were succeeded by modern humans, followed by a recolonization by Neanderthals and a second phase of modern humans around 44,000 years ago.”
teeth and tools
The researchers found petrified teeth and tools from the respective inhabitants of the cave. In the earliest layer of modern human remains was a tooth that Slimak and his colleagues positively assigned to Upper Pleistocene Homo sapiens. Dating indicates that the owner of the tooth lived between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago. “This means that this individual is significantly older than any modern human remains documented to date in Europe,” the researchers write.
The tools of this layer were similar to those found at other, more recent sites of human settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. These are mainly flint blades and tips, which the researchers say were manufactured with remarkable technical precision. “The presence of all production phases, from the beginning to the finished product, shows that the entire production process was carried out in the cave,” they write. The stones used were very uniform and some came from areas that are up to 90 kilometers away from the Grotto Mandrin. “This suggests that people at that time had a large territorial sphere of influence,” the researchers say.
Fast change instead of one-off displacement
The Neanderthal stone tools found in the layers above and below differ markedly in form and craftsmanship. More precise tool analyzes also provided no evidence that modern humans and the Neanderthals would have exchanged culturally in terms of technical traditions. The researchers were also unable to identify any cultural exchange between the various Neanderthal groups. “This is consistent with the scenario of a rapid exchange process without major interactions,” write Slimak and his colleagues.
“The data show that the displacement of native Neanderthal groups was not a simple single event, but a complex historical process during which both populations in the same area replaced each other quickly or even abruptly, at least twice,” the researchers said . “The Mandrin sequence is the first evidence of a plausible co-occurrence of Neanderthals and modern humans in a geographically defined area in Europe.”
Source: Ludovic Slimak (University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France) et al., Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj9496