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Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, and an international team of scientists have documented that Neandertals roamed central Europe as recently as 28,000 years ago -- the latest date ever recorded for Neandertal fossils worldwide.
The team's findings, published in the Oct. 26 issue of the prestigious journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS), could force other scientists to rethink theories of Neandertal extinction, intelligence and contributions to the human gene pool.
The research includes new radiocarbon dating on Neandertal fossils found in northern Croatia, indicating thousands of years of coexistence between Neandertals and early modern humans in central Europe.
"The new dates demonstrate that extinction of the Neandertals by early modern humans, whether by displacement or population absorption, was a slow and geographically mosaic process," Trinkaus said. "The differences between Neandertals and early modern humans in basic behavior and abilities must have been small and rather subtle."
Using direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating, team member Paul Pettitt and colleagues at Oxford University determined that two pieces of Neandertal skulls from the Vindija cave site in Croatia are between 28,000 and 29,000 years old. The new dates refute previous evidence indicating central European Neandertals had disappeared 34,000 years ago.
Neandertals are commonly portrayed as prehistoric humans of limited capabilities who were rapidly replaced and driven to extinction by superior early modern humans, once the latter appeared in Europe. Scientists surmised that early modern humans from the Near East moved first into central Europe and then into western Europe, pushing Neandertals into the Iberian Peninsula at the southwest corner of the continent, where the Neandertals died off about 30,000 years ago.
The new radiocarbon dates not only dispute this pattern of Neandertal migration and extinction, but also question a study in which scientists compared the DNA of a Neandertal with the DNA of contemporary humans. Published two years ago, the study concluded that Neandertals and early modern humans probably didn't interbreed.
Conversely, last year's discovery in Portugal of an early modern human child with distinctive Neandertal characteristics, published by Trinkaus and European colleagues in PNAS in June 1999, strongly supports the conclusion that Neandertals and early modern humans both could and did mate when they came into contact.
"Not only do we have the skeleton of a child in Portugal showing characteristics of common descent, but now we have evidence of the two groups coinciding in central Europe for several millennia, allowing plenty of time for the populations to mix," Trinkaus said.
The new Croatian findings also raise the question of who created the ancient tools unearthed at the Vindija cave site, located about 34 miles north of the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Neandertals are commonly associated with relatively crude stone tools, while early modern humans made more sophisticated stone and bone tools. The Vindija site produced both kinds of tools, including a beveled bone probably used as the tip of a spear.
"The multiple millennia involved leave open who, Neandertals or early modern humans, were the manufacturers of the early upper Paleolithic cultural complexes, including the Aurignacian with its elaborate hunting weaponry, abundant body decoration and representational art," Trinkaus said. "These considerations should renew interest in deciphering the detailed processes that were involved when Neandertals and early modern humans encountered each other in the Late Pleistocene."
Trinkaus and paleontologist Fred H. Smith, chairman of the Anthropology Department at Northern Illinois University, conceived of the research project, secured permission for dating of fossils and assembled the research team. Other team members are Ivor Karavanic at the University of Zagreb and Maja Paunovic of the Croatian Academy of Sciences.
