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Grotto Mandrin: Modern humans lived in Western Europe 10,000 years earlier

2022-02-10T11:11:24.349Z


In a cave in France, researchers have found stone tools and a baby's milk tooth. What that means for the history of Homo sapiens in Europe is spectacular.


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In a cave in France, scientists have made revealing Stone Age finds.

Photo: Yang Yimiao/Xinhua/IMAGO

The Grotte Madrin is a cave in south-eastern France, overlooking the picturesque Rhône Valley, must have been a highly coveted property in the Stone Age: researchers from Europe and the USA have found that modern humans, Homo sapiens, used this cave inhabited - and alternated several times with the Neanderthals.

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Another finding follows from these investigations, which the scientists presented in the journal "Science Advances": Modern humans apparently inhabited Europe around 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Homo sapiens could have settled in Europe as early as 56,800 years ago

Understanding how modern humans interacted with other species—and how and when they encountered them in the first place—is crucial to understanding how Homo sapiens spread throughout the world.

So far, only one find from Greece was known, which spoke for a possible, temporary settlement of modern humans around 210,000 years ago.

Apart from this case, the point in time at which Homo sapiens spread permanently in Europe could be narrowed down to around 45,000 to 43,000 years ago.

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The Grotte Mandrin is located about 130 kilometers northwest of Marseille.

It has been studied by archaeologists and paleontologists for years.

Photo: Ludovic Slimak / AFP

However, the finds from the Grotto Mandrin in France now show that the earliest known presence of modern humans in Europe dates from a time between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago.

In the cave, which some of the researchers have been investigating for several decades, they found stone tools and teeth, among other things, many of which could be attributed to Neanderthals.

However, she came across remains in other strata of the earth that suggested Homo sapiens.

For example, the scientists were able to assign a tooth to modern humans with the help of so-called microtomography.

A DNA analysis was not performed.

Neanderthals, humans, Neanderthals and humans again

In layers of earth again below, they again found evidence of the presence of Neanderthals.

According to the study, the first modern humans probably lived in the cave for about 40 years before leaving for unexplained reasons.

The Neanderthals settled in for another 12,000 years before modern humans once again found shelter in the cave for several hundred years.

There are no indications that there has been a cultural exchange between the human species.

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The finds indicated that Homo sapiens' first foray into the region was not so successful: it is possible that modern Mandrin humans were supplanted by Neanderthals for several millennia after a short period of time.

The Neanderthals only became extinct around 40,000 years ago.

"The data show that the displacement of the native Neanderthal groups was not a simple single event, but a complex historical process, during which both populations in the same area replaced each other rapidly or even abruptly, and at least twice," says in the study.

The Rhone as a migration corridor

According to the researchers, the role that the Rhone river could have played in the spread of modern humans is also relevant.

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Archaeologists find new clues to Neanderthal abilities: The Mystery of the Unicorn Cave, by Guido Kleinhubbert

It is possible that people used the river as a connection between the Mediterranean coast and mainland Europe.

"We are dealing with one of the most important natural migration corridors in the entire ancient world," said University of Toulouse scientist Ludovic Slimak, who led the study.

And he hopes that the cave will provide further insights into the beginnings of Homo sapiens in Europe: "The stylet is like a kind of Neanderthal Pompeii," said the researcher.

vki

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-02-10

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