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Stone tools and a child's tooth found in a cave in southern France dating back to around 54.They are the earliest evidence for the presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Western Europe, much earlier by 10,000 to 12,000 years than current estimates of when our ancestors first arrived from Africa. Which, if confirmed, will lead to the rewriting of the books of European prehistory. The discovery also seems to refute the established notion that Homo sapiens violently wiped out the old Neanderthals after their arrival on the European continent, as it is possible that the two species coexisted for a few thousand years in the same regions, possibly sometimes in peaceful exchanges and sometimes in competition.
The scientists, led by anthropology professor Ludovic Slimack of the University of Toulouse Jean Zorès and the French National Research Centre (CNRS), who published the paper in the journal Science Advances, according to Nature, the BBC and New Scientist, estimate that these are not Neanderthal remains, but that they lived in the same cave both before and after Homo sapiens. It is possible that the two species met, although no traces of cultural exchanges between them have been found.
The latter's presence in the Madren cave in the Rhone Valley, 140 km north of Marseille, is estimated to have lasted only four decades, while that of the Neanderthals lasted for tens of thousands of years. Because of the many other findings at Madren, which will be presented by researchers in the future, Slimak described the cave in question as a kind of Neanderthal Pompeii but without catastrophic events.
To date, the oldest DNA-confirmed traces of Homo sapiens in Europe have been found in a cave in Bulgaria and are about 44 years old.Neanderthals, after living in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, largely disappeared around 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of their Homo sapiens cousins, although some individual groups appear to have survived for a few thousand more years.
Greek professor of paleoanthropology Katerina Harvati of the German University of Tübingen said the findings appear to be convincing and overturn the established picture that most of Europe was the exclusive territory of Neanderthals until about 45 years ago.000 years ago.
He noted that the early presence of Homo sapiens in the Madren cave does not seem to have been very successful, since it lasted only a short time and the Neanderthals returned to the same site. Recall that in 2019 Harvati had presented evidence for the existence of Homo sapiens in Greece 210,000 years ago (at the Apidima cave in Mani), a finding for the presence of our ancestors on the European continent much earlier than the French or Bulgarian cave.
Researcher Clement Zanoli of the University of Bordeaux and the CNRS, who has been involved in research at Madren since 1990 and where some 60,000 stone artefacts and 70,000 animal remains have been found in the meantime, said: There was not just one wave of modern humans arriving and colonising Europe, but there were probably several attempts. What we've found is probably one of them, and there were probably others that we haven't found yet. The unanswered question is whether they left the cave to return from whence they came or whether they simply died there and did not survive more than a few decades. It is impossible to say.
Other scientists, such as archaeologist William Banks of the University of Bordeaux and the CNRS, however, appeared more sceptical whether both the tools and the tooth came from Homo sapiens, as they do not find the evidence entirely convincing. So far, researchers have not attempted to extract ancient DNA from the tooth to ascertain whether it belongs to Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.
Source: Cyprus Times
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