Tom Higham (left) and Katerina Douka selecting samplesUNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, THOMAS HIGHAMNeanderthals overlapped with early modern humans and, based on genetic evidence, even interbred. But the extent of the overlap of the two species both in terms of time and geography is still not fully known, mainly because it has been difficult to accurately date archaeological specimens that go back more than 30,000 years. Using newer techniques, a large-scale dating effort of Neanderthal specimens from Western Europe to Russia now narrows the timing of the extinction of Neanderthals to a span of 2,000 years—between 39,000 and 41,000 years ago. The study is published today (August 20) in Nature.
“The results point to a mosaic pattern of Neanderthal extinction in Europe and provide a shorter time frame for the potential interaction of humans with Neanderthals,” said study author Ron Pinhasi, a professor of archaeology at the University College Dublin in Ireland.
Tom Higham, an archaeological dating expert at the University of Oxford in the U.K., along with Pinhasi and an international team of colleagues, dated almost 200 Neanderthal bone, charcoal, and tool specimens from 40 archaeological sites across Europe. The results reveal that Neanderthals disappeared from the European continent at various times depending on the region. The findings also provide evidence that Neanderthals and early modern humans coexisted for about 2,600 to 5,400 years.
“According to this study, the overlap of humans and Neanderthals ...
