How long did modern humans and Neanderthals live side by side in Europe before the Neanderthals died out? Researchers have approached this question with the help of statistical probability models, which, based on the age of known artefacts, estimate when modern humans first appeared in France and Spain and when the Neanderthals disappeared at the latest. According to this, the two human species could have coexisted for 1400 to 2900 years.
It is considered certain that our ancestors once encountered the Neanderthals – not least because traces of Neanderthal heritage can be detected in our current genome. Some fossil evidence seems to suggest that both human species may have coexisted in Europe for 5,000 to 6,000 years before the Neanderthals became extinct. However, especially on a regional level, it is difficult to determine when and for how long modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalensis) lived side by side and to what extent there were encounters.
Artifacts as contemporary witnesses
“In France and northern Spain, a region from which some of the youngest directly dated Neanderthal fossils in Europe come, remnants of the Proto-Aurignacian culture attributed to modern humans appear to supersede artefacts attributed to the Châtelperron culture of Neanderthals.” , explains a research team led by Igor Djakovic from Leiden University in the Netherlands. To find out to what extent the occurrences of the two human species overlapped in this region, the team analyzed a data set of 28 Neanderthal and modern human artifacts each from seventeen archaeological sites in France and northern Spain, as well as ten additional Neanderthal samples from the same region. The samples in the database were aged using rabiocarbon dating.
Djakovic and his statistical probability modeling team used this data to derive the earliest and latest plausible dates when the two human species might have lived at the sites. Based on the models, the authors estimate that Neanderthal artifacts first appeared between 45,343 and 44,248 years ago and disappeared between 39,894 and 39,798 years. The Neanderthal extinction date, based on directly dated Neanderthal remains, is between 40,870 and 40,457 years. The first appearance of modern humans has been dated to 42,653 to 42,269 years.
Type of coexistence unclear
“The results indicate that the beginning of the settlement of this region by Homo sapiens probably predates the Neanderthal extinction by up to 1400 to 2900 years,” the researchers report. “This is broadly consistent with previous estimates and confirms the duration of the coexistence of these two groups during the early Western European Upper Palaeolithic.” Based on the geographic distribution of the artifacts, Djakovic and his team conclude that the Proto-Aurignacian culture, the attributed to modern humans, spread from south to north, while contemporaneous artifacts of the Châtelperron culture, the last Neanderthal culture in western Europe, also appeared. Previous studies had indicated that the Châtelperron culture may have been influenced by modern human technology.
Whether and to what extent the similarities found actually go back to a contact between the two craft traditions remains unclear, even on the basis of the current study. “But the potential coexistence of the groups that produced these artifacts is certainly significant,” the researchers said. “However, the exact nature of the coexistence of Neanderthals and modern humans has yet to be elucidated.”
Source: Igor Djakovic (Leiden University, The Netherlands) et al., Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-19162-z