ABOVE: Stone artifacts from Bacho Kiro cave
© TSENKA TSANOVA
In Bulgaria’s Bacho Kiro cave, which was already known to have housed Neanderthals more than 50,000 years ago, researchers have discovered the remains of ancient humans that date to about 46,000–44,000 years ago, according to a study published yesterday (May 11) in Nature. These fossils—a molar and six pieces of bone—are older than any previously analyzed fossils of Homo sapiens, which were from individuals who lived around 45,000 to 41,500 years ago, Science News reports.
The discoveries in the cave also provide evidence that modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals, who didn’t disappear from the region until about 40,000 years ago, according to Science.
“In my view, this is the oldest and strongest published evidence for an IUP (Initial Upper Palaeolithic) presence of H. sapiens in Europe, several millennia before the Neanderthals disappeared,” Chris Stringer, a research leader for human evolution at ...
