By now, it’s hardly news that modern humans and our neanderthal brothers and sisters lived side by side for tens of thousands of years. The big question is, what happened to the neanderthals? Were they wiped out? Or absorbed? Was it sudden or gradual?
This winter researchers in France report on a site that was settled alternately by neanderthals and modern humans. Neanderthals lived at the site from at least many tens of thousands of year. But further investigation of occupation found that around 54,000 years ago the site was settled by modern humans for a brief period (2,000 years?). Then it was occupied by neanderthals again, and eventually humans took over for good about 40,000 years ago.
This finding pushes back the earliest arrival of modern humans in Europe, and indicates that the replacement of neanderthals was relatively gradual, over ten of thousand years or more. The alternating occupation also suggests that there was a back and fourth, not a single displacing event. It also suggests that whatever ultimate advantage modern humans may have had, neanderthals could still compete (assuming it was competition).
Viewing this European episode in the context of the world wide replacement of neanderthals, we can see that it was a complicated episode, with populations migrating across the old world, encountering, interbreeding, and trading with different bands of cousins.
We still don’t know what happened to the neanderthals. But it doesn’t look like they were simply wiped out by modern humans. Which makes it all that much more mysterious.
- Pallab Ghosh, Neanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out, in BBC News – Science & Environment, February 9, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60305218
- Ludovic Slimak, Clément Zanolli, Tom Higham, Marine Frouin, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, J. Arnold Lee, Martina Demuro, Katerina Douka, Norbert Mercier, Gilles Guérin, Hélène Valladas, Pascale Yvorra, Yves Giraud, Andaine Seguin-Orlando, Ludovic Orlando, E. Lewis Jason, Xavier Muth, Hubert Camus, Ségolène Vandevelde, Mike Buckley, Carolina Mallol, Chris Stringer, and Laure Metz, Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France. Science Advances, 8 (6):eabj9496, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496
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