14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new scientific study, it would appear that the Neanderthal Man went extinct as much as 10,000 years earlier than experts previously calculated. The finding is based on a series of investigations in which researchers dated fossils belonging to this species directly.
During the experiments, researchers had access to a series of fossils that were recovered from a cave in the northern Caucasus mountain range, in the Russian Federation. This location is extremely important to anthropologists, as it was apparently home to a small Neanderthal population back in the day.
The direct dating technique applied to these fossils revealed that they were, in fact, about 10,000 years older than past assessments had indicated. The most important implication this study carries is that modern humans and Neanderthals may have not interacted as much as thought.
For many years, researchers have been suggesting that the two species of hominids lived side by side for thousands of years, throughout central and northern Europe. But this idea is now slowly slipping into oblivion, in front of the new evidence being brought to the table.
Scientists behind the new study say that the interactions the two species may have had extended for a few centuries tops, but less than a millennium in either case, Daily Galaxy reports.
Some areas of the world may have already been devoid of any Neanderthals by the time anatomically-modern humans made their way out of Africa, and into Europe and Asia. The study that came to this conclusion was coordinated by experts at the University of Oxford and the University College Cork.
The St Petersburg, Russia-based Laboratory of Prehistory was also involved in the study, which was focused on the site called Mezmaiskaya Cave. The fossils the team uncovered were located in the Late Middle Paleolithic layer.
After dating the bones, the team learned that the fossils were around 39,700 years old. This means that Neanderthals did not live until about 30,000 years ago, as previously suggested. Climate change and dwindling resources are among the most common explanations for why the species went extinct.
“The latest dating techniques mean we can purify the collagen extracted from tiny fragments of fossil very effectively without contaminating it,” explains study coauthor Dr Tom Higham, who is the deputy director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.
“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,” the expert goes on to say.
“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,” he adds.
“The extinction of Neanderthals here is, therefore, an indicator we think, of when that first probably happened,” Higham concludes.