NEANDERTHALS, HUMANS COEXISTED IN EUROPE FOR OVER 2,000 YEARS-STUDY
PARIS—Neanderthals and humans lived alongside each other in France and northern Spain for up to 2,900 years, research suggest, giving them plenty of time to potentially learn from or even breed with each other.
While the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, did not provide evidence that humans directly interacted with Neanderthals, previous genetic research has shown that they must have at some point.
Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who won the medicine Nobel prize, helped reveal that almost everyone worldwide have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.
Igor Djakovic, a doctorate student and lead author of the new study, said we know that humans and Neanderthals “met and integrated in Europe.”
Fossil evidence has suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals walked the Earth at the same time for thousands of years.
To find out more, the Leiden-led team looked at radiocarbon dating for 56 artifacts from 17 sites across France and northern Spain.
The artifacts included bones as well as distinctive stone knives thought to have been made by some of the last Neanderthals in the region.
The researchers then used Bayesian modeling that found Neanderthals in the region went extinct between 40,870 and 40,457 years ago, while modern humans first appeared around 42,500 years ago. This means the two species lived alongside each other in the region for between 1,400 and 2,900 years, the study said.
The period is associated with substantial transformations in the way people produced tools and ornaments, Djakovic said.
Artifacts produced by Neanderthals started to look much more like those made by humans, he added.
The new timeline could further bolster a leading theory that Neanderthals mated with humans.
Breeding could have meant that, over time, Neanderthals were “swallowed into our gene pool,” Djakovic said.
“When you combine that with what we know now—that most people living on Earth have Neanderthal DNA—you could make the argument that they never really went extinct, in a certain sense.”