Historical story

When did the first Homo sapiens finally arrive in Western Europe?

Stone tools and a child's tooth found in a cave in southern France and dated to around 54,000 years ago are the earliest evidence of the presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Western Europe, much earlier - by 10,000 to 12,000 years - than the so far estimates of when our ancestors first arrived from Africa. Which - if confirmed - will lead to the European prehistory books being rewritten. The discovery also seems to overturn the established notion that Homo sapiens violently wiped out the "old" Neanderthals after their arrival on the European continent, as it is likely that the two species coexisted for several thousand years in the same areas, possibly sometimes in conditions of peaceful exchange. and when competition.

The scientists, led by professor of anthropology Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse "Jean Zores" and the French National Center for Research (CNRS), who made the relevant publication in the journal "Science Advances", according to "Nature", the BBC and "New Scientist", believe that these are not Neanderthal remains, but they lived in the same cave both before and after Homo sapiens. It is possible that the two species met, although no traces of cultural exchanges between them were found.

The presence of the latter in the Madren cave in the Rhone valley, 140 kilometers north of Marseille, is estimated to have lasted only four decades, while that of the Neanderthals for tens of thousands of years. Due to the many other finds at Madren, which will be presented in the future by researchers, Slimak called the cave in question "a kind of Neanderthal Pompeii but without catastrophic events".

To date, the oldest DNA-confirmed traces of Homo sapiens in Europe have been found in a cave in Bulgaria and are about 44,000 years old, while the Neanderthals, after living in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, largely disappeared about 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of their "cousins" Homo sapiens, although some individual groups seem to have endured for a few thousand more years.

Greek paleoanthropology professor Katerina Harvati of Germany's University of Tübingen said the findings appear to be convincing and overturn the established image that most of Europe was the exclusive domain of Neanderthals until about 45,000 years ago. He noted that the early presence of Homo sapiens in Madren Cave does not seem to have been very successful, as it lasted a short time and Neanderthals returned to the same site. It is recalled that in 2019 Harvati presented evidence for the existence of Homo sapiens in Greece 210,000 years ago (in the Apidima cave in Mani), a finding for the presence of our ancestors on the European continent much earlier than the French or Bulgarian cave.

Researcher Clément Zanoli of the University of Bordeaux and CNRS, who has been involved in Madrain's excavations since 1990 and where around 60,000 stone artefacts and 70,000 animal remains have since been found, said:"There was not just a wave of modern humans who arrived and colonized Europe, but there were probably several attempts. What we found is probably one of them, and there may have been others we haven't found yet. Whether they left the cave to go back from whence they came, or whether they just they died there and did not survive more than a few decades. It is impossible to say".

Other scientists, such as the archaeologist William Banks of the University of Bordeaux and the CNRS, however, appeared more cautious about whether both the tools and the tooth come from Homo sapiens, as they do not consider the evidence entirely convincing. So far researchers have not attempted to extract ancient DNA from the tooth to confirm whether it belongs to Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.

You can see the full scientific paper here.

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