LONDON A new Analysis of remains from 40 archaeological sites, from Russia to Spain, has allowed us to determine that the Neanderthals agreed Europe modern humans for a period of 2 000 600-5000 400 years.
From improved radiocarbon dating technique, researchers led by a team from the University British Oxford detailed in a study published today in the journal Nature that Neanderthals disappeared from Europe about 40,000 years ago.
There was an abrupt extinction, scientists say, but a gradual process that followed their own pace in different parts of the continent.
The new chronology highlights the pattern that followed the disappearance of Neanderthals and “suggests that survived probably some small populations at particular points in Europe before becoming extinct,” said Thomas Higham, head of research.
The millennia when Neanderthals and modern humans in the Americas coincided represent “a comprehensive program for the transmission of cultural and symbolic behavior time and to possible genetic exchanges,” says the study.
The researchers describe the Europe of that period of transition between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, as a “mixed population”.
According to the study authors, 45,000 years ago, before I started this process of change, Europe was essentially Neanderthal, with small pockets of modern humans in certain regions.
This distribution changed in the ensuing millennia, an evolution that was forged over generations 25-250, depending on geographic location.
Professor at the University of the Basque Country Alvaro Arrizabalaga, one of the researchers involved in the study, noted that while “can not exclude that cultural and genetic exchanges between the two groups,” that is the “big question remains yet to be confirmed in Europe. ”
“Yes we know that there was (exchange) in the Middle East,” he added.
Determine the spatial and temporal relationship between Neanderthals and humans is essential to understand the process that led to the demise of the former.
Technical limitations have been one of the most serious challenges to researchers in this field, since the archaeological remains that are close to the border of 50,000 years as retain low carbon-14 is difficult to obtain precise dating.
For the new study, scientists have re-analyzed samples of key European archaeological sites, in the light of the radiocarbon dating technique with accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS, in English), to determine that the Mousterian period, associated with useful and Neanderthals industry, ended in Europe between 30 and 41 thousand 39 thousand 260 years ago.
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