Study places Homo sapiens in Europe earlier than thought

PARIS－Homo sapiens ventured into Neanderthal territory in Europe much earlier than previously thought, according to an archaeological study published in Science magazine on Wednesday.

Up to now, archaeological discoveries had indicated that Neanderthals disappeared from the European continent about 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of their "cousin" Homo sapiens barely 5,000 years earlier. There is no evidence of an encounter between these two groups.

The new discovery by a team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists led by Ludovic Slimak from the University of Toulouse pushes back the arrival of Homo sapiens in Western Europe to around 54,000 years ago.

Another remarkable finding is that the two types of humans alternated in inhabiting the Mandrin cave in what is now the Rhone region in southern France.

The Mandrin site, first excavated in 1990, includes layer upon layer of archaeological remains dating back over 80,000 years.

"Mandrin is like a kind of Neanderthalian Pompeii without catastrophic events, but with continuous filling of sands in the cave deposited progressively by a strong wind－the Mistral," Slimak told Agence France-Presse.

His team uncovered a layer known as the "E layer", containing at least 1,500 cut flint points, more finely executed than the points and blades in the layers above and below.

These points "are standardized, to the nearest millimeter, something we haven't seen at all with Neanderthals," said Slimak, a specialist in Neanderthal societies. The points are very small in size, with some of them less than a centimeter in length.

'Exciting findings'

These, he explained, were probably arrowheads, unknown in Europe at that time.

He attributes this production to a culture called Neronian, linked to several sites in the Rhone area.

"The findings from Mandrin are really exciting and are another piece in the puzzle of how and when modern humans arrived in Europe," said Chris Stringer, co-author of the study and a specialist in human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London.

"Understanding more about the overlap between modern humans and other hominins in Eurasia is vital to understanding more about their interactions, and how we became the last remaining human species."

This overlap, which was evident in Mandrin, now places the Rhone region as a "major migration corridor" for Homo sapiens, enabling them to reach the Mediterranean and continental European areas, said Slimak, who promises more discoveries from the Mandrin site.

Agencies Via Xinhua