Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe much earlier than previously thought
Cavemen during the Ice Age, from a sketch by Professor Klaatsch in the late 19th century. (Bridgeman Images)
The discovery of the team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists led by Ludovic Slimak, CNRS researcher at the University of Toulouse, pushes back the arrival of Homo Sapiens in Western Europe to around 54,000 years ago. A revolutionary conclusion of a new study carried out in a cave in the Drôme. Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals would have coexisted in this territory.
It is a discovery that upsets the history of the settlement of Europe by modern man, Homo Sapiens. The latter ventured into European Neanderthal territory much earlier than reported so far, as evidenced by fossils and tools from the Mandrin cave, on the Rhône , in France, according to a study published in the journal "Science Advances » Wednesday. So far, archaeological discoveries have indicated the disappearance of Neanderthals from the European continent around 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of his "cousin" Homo Sapiens (around -45,000 years ago). Without any clue betraying a cohabitation between these two human species.
The discovery of the team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists led by Ludovic Slimak, CNRS researcher at the University of Toulouse, pushes back the arrival of Homo Sapiens in Western Europe to around 54,000 years ago. Another remarkable fact, it reveals his occupation of the Mandrin cave alternately with Neanderthal, where, ordinarily, Sapiens replaced the latter for good.
Under the white rock shelter, located in the Drôme (south of France) and excavated since 1990, there are several archaeological layers retracing more than 80,000 years of occupation of the place, "where everything is extremely well preserved in very regular sand deposits, carried by the mistral,” the researcher told AFP. His team falls on an enigma: a layer, baptized “E”, conceals at least 1,500 points of cut flint, the finesse of the execution of which contrasts with the points and blades, of more classic execution, of the upper and lower strata.
Use of fuliginochronology
Very small in size, for some less than a centimeter, these points "are normalized, to the nearest millimeter, standardized, something that we do not know at all in Neanderthals", says Ludovic Slimak, specialist in Neanderthal societies. Probably arrowheads, unknown in Europe at that time. He attributes this production to a culture called “Néronien”, which concerns several sites in the Rhone corridor. And left in 2016 with his team at the Harvard Peabody Museum in the United States, to confront his discovery there with a collection of carved fossils from the site of Ksar Akil, at the foot of Mount Lebanon (Lebanon). One of the high places of the expansion of Homo Sapiens to the east of the Mediterranean.
The similarity between the techniques used makes him suppose that Mandrin is the first site listing Sapiens in Europe. His lead was the right one: a baby tooth, found in the famous “E” layer, confirms it. At Mandrin, the researchers found nine teeth, in more or less good condition and belonging to six individuals, entrusted to Clément Zanolli, a CNRS paleoanthropologist at the University of Bordeaux.
Thanks to microtomography (a very high-resolution scanner), his verdict is clear: the E-layer milk tooth "is the only modern human tooth found in this place", explained the researcher to the press agency. . The team then used a pioneering technique, fuliginochronology, which analyzes the layers of soot impregnating the walls of a cave, traces of ancient hearths. The study of the fragments of walls, "fallen directly into the layers, shows that Homo Sapiens returned once a year in the cavity, over forty years", according to Ludovic Slimak.
The Rhône, a “great migration corridor”
Homo Sapiens came to this cave just one year after Neanderthals passed through this shelter. When he leaves it definitively, Neanderthal returns there, much later (approximately a thousand years). "At some point the two populations either coexisted in the cave or on the same territory", concluded the researcher. Who imagines that Neanderthal could have served as a guide for Sapiens to lead him to the best sources of flint available, located for some up to 90 km away... "In ethnography, the question of taking guides in unknown territory is universal", says he remark.
Finally, "the appearance of modern humans and the disappearance of Neanderthals are much more complex" than imagined so far, underlines Professor Chris Stringer, co-signer of the study and specialist in human evolution at the Natural History Museum. in London. Understanding their overlap is essential to explain "why we have become the only remaining human species", he adds, quoted in a press release.
This overlap, evident in Mandrin, now places the Rhône as a “great migration corridor” allowing Homo Sapiens “to join the Mediterranean space and the European continental space”, according to Ludovic Slimak. Which promises other discoveries on the content of Mandrin.
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