Neanderthals Mingled for Millenia

There is a new article in Nature about Neanderthals. My previous posts on them: here. I think they're an interesting group which overlapped with both Hss and Homo erectus (aka Java Man, aka Peking Man). I talked a ton about Homo erectus at the AHS14 talk because though we do not apparently have DNA data yet, he had such range and geographic breadth like Neanderthals, that there certainly likely existed co-mingled culture and blood between Hss and Homo erectus. New evidence appears to indicate we shared many things with Neanderthals for several thousand years... and their demise appears staggered over geography and time. I still wonder what diet, lifestyles and climate changes affected their extinction? They were cold adapted, surviving Ice Ages and interglacials. They grew rapidly during maturation and development, even more than there predecessors, almost like a vampirish subspecies. But, apparently something in the warmer climates laid claim to their eventually deaths as an independent native race. It's still a mystery. Too bad gut and intestinal tissues haven't survived the millenia for sophisticated analysis.



The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance

Part of abstract: The timing of Neanderthal disappearance and the extent to which they overlapped with the earliest incoming anatomically modern humans (AMHs) in Eurasia are key questions in palaeoanthropology1, 2. Determining the spatiotemporal relationship between the two populations is crucial if we are to understand the processes, timing and reasons leading to the disappearance of Neanderthals and the likelihood of cultural and genetic exchange.

Editor's summary

Did anatomically modern humans coexist with Neanderthals? Attempts to answer this question are complicated by the fact that conventional methods of radiocarbon dating become unreliable at just about the time in question: as sample ages approach 50,000 years little carbon-14 is left and it is difficult to obtain accurate measurements. Tom Higham and colleagues have worked to improve sample processing and accelerator-mass-spectrometry radiocarbon dating in order to construct a robust chronology based on the last appearances of the Mousterian tool culture — considered diagnostic for the presence of Neanderthals — from forty sites from Spain to Russia. The results indicate that Neanderthals disappeared at different times in different regions, with a significant overlap with incoming modern humans for around 2,600 to 5,400 years. Rather than a rapid model of replacement, this work suggests a complex picture in which cultural and biological interchange could have occurred between the two groups across a period of several thousand years.