Neanderthal versus Modern Humans
© Ian TattersallComparison of Neanderthal and modern human skeletons. Photo: K. Mowbray, Reconstruction: G. Sawyer and B. Maley,
Neanderthals may have died out 10,000 years earlier than is commonly believed, suggests new dating of the remains of a Neanderthal infant.

The finding, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may revise the present Neanderthal timeline. It's commonly believed that Neanderthals from what is now Russia died out around 30,000 years ago. The latest discovery could push back the Neanderthal extinction, at least for this region, to 39,700 years ago, which was the age of the infant's fossil.

Since modern humans are believed to have arrived in the northern Caucasus region just a few hundred years beforehand, that means our species may not have had much, if any, time to interact with Neanderthals.

Ron Pinhasi
© University College Cork, IrelandRon Pinhasi
Lead author Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork said in a press release:
"It now seems much clearer that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans did not co-exist in the Caucasus, and it is possible that this scenario is also true for most regions of Europe. Many of the previous dates for late Neanderthal occupation or sites across Europe are problematic.

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This is simply an outcome of the fact that the association between the dated material and late Neanderthals is not always clear because we cannot always be certain whether archaeological stone tool assemblages, such as the Mousterian, that has been attributed in the case of Europe to Neanderthals, was not in some cases actually produced by modern humans. We have to directly date Neanderthal and anatomically modern human fossils to resolve this."
Pinhasi and his colleagues radiocarbon dated the Neanderthal infant remains, as well as the fossils for associated animal bones in Mezmaiskaya Cave, a key site in the northern Caucasus within European Russia. The revised dating indicates Neanderthals did not survive in this cave region much beyond the 39,700 years ago date, so maybe Mezmaiskaya Cave was a last stand for these large hominids.

Since their demise in this spot would appear to coincide with the arrival of our species, it's possible that we wiped them out if interaction occurred. Other studies strongly support that interbreeding took place at some sites, so I hope we made love and not war in Russia too.

Another possibility is that Neanderthals died out in some spots before we even arrived, possibly due to climate change, dwindling resources, or other scenarios. Following this theory, the climate shift might have permitted modern humans to expand their territory, perhaps using better tool technologies to succeed where Neanderthals had failed.

Technology didn't inhibit the researchers, though.

Co-author Tom Higham, Deputy Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, explained:
"The latest dating techniques mean we can purify the collagen extracted from tiny fragments of fossil very effectively without contaminating it. Previously, research teams have provided younger dates which we now know are not robust, possibly because the fossil has become contaminated with more modern particles.

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This latest dating evidence sheds further light on the extinction dates for Neanderthals in this key region, which is seen by many as a crossroads for the movement of modern humans into the wider Russian plains. The extinction of Neanderthals here is, therefore, an indicator we think, of when that first probably happened."