The advent of Homo sapiens killed European Neanderthals
Scientists have come to the conclusion that modern people — more precisely, their prehistoric ancestors — took three attempts — and 12 thousand years — to colonize Europe. Homo sapiens supplanted the Neanderthals between 54,000 and 42,000 years ago, according to a new (and controversial) study.
It took three separate waves of modern humans to colonize Europe between 54,000 and 42,000 years ago. This key conclusion, writes The Observer, was reached by scientists who studied caves in the Rhone Valley, where they found evidence that Homo sapiens had to make three decisive attempts to move west and north from Western Asia before they could settle on the continent.
“The first two of these waves failed, but the third succeeded about 42,000 years ago,” said Ludovic Slimac of the University of Toulouse, who is leading the excavations in France. – After that, modern people seized power in Europe. The Neanderthals who evolved on the continent died out.”
The group's study, published in the journal Plos One, is controversial because it implies that our species settled in Europe over 12,000 years. The transition of modern people to the continent was by no means a quick process, but a long journey across the Mediterranean before the ancestors of modern Europeans headed north, up the Rhone valley.
The article, The Observer notes, is controversial because it questions the origin of one of the key prehistoric stone tools that have been discovered in central France. They are known as Châtelperron Stone Age tools, named after the village where they were first found in the 19th century.
It is important to note that these tools, distinguished by their elegant thin blades and complex construction, have since been attributed — by many , but not by all scientists — Neanderthal tool makers. These researchers claim that the found tools show that Neanderthals were capable of highly advanced tool making and complex behavior.
But Slimak rejects this view. “Châtelperron tools are the work of people, and given their similarity to the stone tools that were made in the Middle East, we conclude that they were brought there by Homo sapiens when they migrated to Europe.”
According to Professor Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum, this claim is bound to spark controversy. “This is a provocative and ambitious document,” he told The Observer. “In particular, it claims that the stone industry of Châtelperron, which is usually considered the product of the Neanderthals, was in fact the work of Homo sapiens. Therefore, the alleged associations of Neanderthal fossils with Châtelperron tools must be untenable,” he says.
Slimak has also argued in previous articles that the people who first appeared in Africa around 60,000 years ago may have been armed with bows and arrows, judging by the tiny, 54,000-year-old pointed stone tools that look very similar to the arrowheads that were found in the Grotte Mandrin cave. in the Rhone Valley. This technology, which allowed hunters to kill from a distance without endangering themselves, would give the aliens a vital advantage over native Neanderthals.
However, after about 40 years, this first group of predecessors of modern man disappeared from the fossil record, and subsequently the place was reoccupied by Neanderthals. If our ancestors were better armed, why did this first invasion of Europe end the way it did? Likewise: why did the second wave, which probably happened around 44,000 to 46,000 years ago, also fail?
There's a simple answer, Slimak says. Those early waves of people simply lacked numbers. He believes that there were up to 100 men, women and children in the Grotte Mandrin settlement. “Perhaps this was not enough to maintain their biological strength, and perhaps they could not exchange genes with local Neanderthals because fertility between them was low,” he added.
However, he rejected the idea of that the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans was bad. In fact, everything points to the fact that the two groups were on good terms.
Then came the third wave, and this time our ancestors really did seem to have a numerical advantage, Slimak added: once they came, modern people did it with a really huge wave of people.”