Neanderthals coexisted with modern humans in various places in present-day France and northern Spain for more than 2,000 years, during which time these two human species had time to mix, according to a scientific model.
The study, based on fossil discoveries, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, does not present direct evidence of an interaction between these two populations, which occurred about 40,000 years ago.
But scientists know that there was contact between them, as revealed, among others, by the recent Nobel Prize in Medicine, the Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo.
Much of the world’s population has some Neanderthal DNA.
The researchers “do not know in which specific region” the possible encounters took place, stresses the study’s lead author, Igor Djakovic, a doctoral student at the Dutch University of Leiden.
The duration of coexistence between species also remains a matter of debate.
In an attempt to answer these questions, the Leiden team examined the carbon-14 dating of 56 objects, half attributed to Neanderthals and the other to modern humans, found at 17 archaeological sites in France and northern Spain.
Scientists have used the dates of these objects, including bones and stone tools attributed to the last Neanderthals, in statistical and probabilistic models.
The conclusion points to the fact that Neanderthals disappeared between 40,870 and 40,457 years ago, while modern humans appeared in this part of the European continent about 42,500 years ago.
This would mean that the two species coexisted for a period of 1,400 to 2,900 years.
This period coincides with a great “diffusion of ‘ideas'” between these two populations, Igor Djakovic told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The period of coexistence is “associated with substantial transformations in the way in which (modern) humans produced cultural objects,” such as tools or ornaments, according to the researcher.
Objects produced by Neanderthals also changed “drastically” and began to resemble those made by modern humans.
The study supports the thesis that explains the disappearance of the Neanderthals through their progressive absorption into the population of modern humans.
“The Neanderthals would have been, by interbreeding, absorbed into our genetic heritage”, highlights the researcher from the University of Leiden.
But given that “most of the inhabitants of the Earth have Neanderthal DNA, it can be said that, in a way, it never really disappeared,” says Igor Djakovic.
Source: TSF
