As Earth Pages reported in December 2011 a refined method of radiocarbon dating that removes contamination by younger carbon has pushed back the oldest accessible 14C dates. Indeed, materials previously dated using less sophisticated methods are found to be significantly older. This has led archaeologists to rethink several hypotheses , none more so than those concerned with the relationship in Europe between anatomically modern humans (AMH) and Neanderthals, especially the extinction of the latter.
The team of geochronologists at Oxford University who pioneered accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of carbon isotopes, together with the many European archaeologists whose research has benefitted from it, have now published results from 40 sites across Europe that have yielded either Neanderthal remains or the tools they are thought to have fashioned (Higham, T. and 47 others. The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance. Nature, v. 512, p. 306-309) . One such site is Gorham’s Cave in the Rock of Gibraltar where earlier dating suggested that Neanderthals clung on in southern Iberia until about 25 ka. Another hypothesis concerns the so called Châtelperronian tool industry which previous dating at the upper age limit of earlier radiocarbon methodology could not resolve whether or not it preceded AMH colonisation of Europe; i.e. it could either have been a Neanderthal invention or copied from the new entrants. Most important is establishing when AMH first did set foot in previously Neanderthal’s exclusive territory and for how long the two kinds of human cohabited Europe before the elder group met its end.
The new data do not quash the idea of Neanderthals eking out survival almost until the last glacial maximum in the southernmost Iberian Peninsula, since material from Gorham’s Cave could not be dated. However, occupation levels at another site in southern Spain in which Neanderthal fossils occur and that had been dated at 33 ka turned out to be much older (46 ka). So it is now less likely that Neanderthals survived here any longer than they did elsewhere.
Neanderthal remains are generally associated with a tool kit known as the Mousterian that is not as sophisticated as that carried by AMH at the same time. Of the Mousterian sites that yielded AMS ages, the oldest (the Hyaena Cave in Devon, Britain) dates to almost 50 ka. The youngest has a 95% probability of being about 41 ka old. Of course, Neanderthals may have survived until later, but there is no age data to support that conjecture. The earliest known AMH remains in Europe are those associated with the so-called Uluzzian tool industry of the Italian peninsula. In southern Italy Mousterian tools are replaced by Uluzzian between about 44.8 and 44.0 ka, while Mousterian culture was sustained in northern Italy until between 41.7 to 40.5 ka.
Châtelperronian tools associated with Neanderthal remains occur in south-western France and the Pyrenees. The new AMS dating shows that the culture arose at about the same time (~45 ka) as the Uluzzian tool industry began in Italy and ended in those areas where it was used at about the same time (~41 ka) as did the more widespread Mousterian culture. So the question of whether Neanderthals copied stone shaping techniques from the earliest Uluzzian-making AMH more than 500 km to the east, or invented the methods themselves remains an open question. But does it matter as regards the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals? Copying methodology is part and parcel of the success and survival of succeeding AMH, but o too is the capacity to invent useful novelties from scratch. So, yes it does matter, for Neanderthals had sustained the Mousterian culture for tens to hundreds of thousand years with little change.
The upshot of these better data on timing is that AMH and Neanderthals co-existed in Europe for between 2.6 to 5.4 ka; as long as the time back from now to the Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Even allowing for low population density to make contacts only occasional, this is surely too long for systematic slaughter of Neanderthals by AMH. Yet it gives plenty of time for two-way transmission of cultural and symbolic activities, and even for genetic exchanges: assimilation as well as out-competition.
Incidentally, Scientific American’s September 2014 issue is partly devoted to broader issues of human evolution (Wong, K. (editor) The Human Saga. Scientific American, v. 311(No 3), p. 20-75) with a focus on new developments. These cover: a revised time line; the emerging complexity of hominin evolution by veteran palaeoanthropologist Bernard Wood.; the influence of climate change; by Peter de Menocal; cultural evolution in the broad hominin context by Ian Tattersall; a discussion of hominin mating arrangements by Blake Edgar; two contributions on cooperation versus competition among hominins by Frans de Wall and GGry Stix; two articles on recent biological and future cultural evolution by John Hawks and Sherry Turkle (interview).
Earth-logs 
Given the modern understanding of primate behaviour in terms of between group competition at all scales including warfare and genocide it would seem reasonable to posit that the relatively short overlap period of a few thousand years in Europe between AMH and Neanderthals involved a competitive displacement sequence of the latter by the former.
LikeLike
Dear s.d. wright/ Huiarau
The lack of any tangible evidence for hostile relations between AMH and Neanderthals together with the DNA evidence for interbreeding between the two groups suggests to me that some other explanation is more likely, such as depletion of foraging and hunting resources by the nomadic early AMH entrants to the Neanderthal-occupied areas. There is evidence that the Neanderthal lifestyle was based on hunting ranges around fixed sites, so that the appearance of more mobile competitors would make local subsistence more difficult for Neanderthals, especially during climate deterioration and ecosystem change around 40 ka ago.
Steve Drury
LikeLike