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Tiny protein and DNA fragments recovered from bones found in eight-metre-deep cave soil suggest that Neanderthals and humans likely coexisted in northern Europe until 45,000 years ago. It was revealed.
Genetic analysis of fossils discovered in a cave near the eastern German town of Ranis suggests that modern humans were makers of distinctive leaf-shaped stone tools, leading archaeologists to They once believed that these stone tools were made by Neanderthals, a heavily built hominin. People lived in Europe until about 40,000 years ago.
Until now, modern humans, or Homo sapiens, were not known to have lived as far north as the region where their tools were made.
“The cave ruins of Ranis provide evidence of the initial dispersal of Homo sapiens into the high latitudes of Europe. Stone tools thought to have been made by Neanderthals were actually part of the toolkit of early Homo sapiens “It turned out that it was part of the world,” said study author Jean-Jacques Hublin, professor and emeritus president of the Collège de France in Paris. News release from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
“This fundamentally changes what we know about this period. Homo sapiens arrived in northwestern Europe long before Neanderthals disappeared in southwestern Europe.”
The discovery means the two groups, which once interbred and left behind traces of Neanderthal DNA to keep most humans alive today, may have overlapped for thousands of years. It also shows that our species, Homo sapiens, crossed the Alps and into the cold regions of northern and central Europe earlier than thought.
Three studies detailing the discovery and laboratory analysis were published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Research shows that the style of stone tools discovered at Ranis have also been found across Europe, from Moravia and eastern Poland to the British Isles. Archaeologists refer to this style of tool as Rinconbian-Rannissian-Yelsmanovisian (LRJ), after the location where it was first identified.
To find out who made the artifacts, the research team excavated the Ilsenhelle cave near Ranis between 2016 and 2022. When the cave was first excavated in the 1930s, only tools were found and analyzed. This time, the team was able to dig deeper and more systematically, eventually discovering the first human fossil there.
“The challenge was to excavate a total length of 8 meters from top to bottom in the hope that some deposits from the excavations in the 1930s remained,” said study co-author and professor at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen. said Marcel Weiss, a researcher at the University of Nuremberg and the Max Planck Institute. In A Statement to Evolutionary Anthropology. “Fortunately, we were able to find a 1.7 meter thick rock that previous excavators could not pass through. After removing that rock by hand, we finally discovered the LRJ formation and discovered that it was the human We also found fossils.”
However, human remains could not be immediately identified among the hundreds of bone fragments unearthed during six years of excavation. It was only later that the research team realized for certain that the layer of sediment containing the LRJ stone tools also contained human remains.
Marcel Weiss
Excavation of the eight-metre-deep hole at Ranis Cave was logistically difficult and required elaborate scaffolding to support the trench, researchers said.
Researchers used proteins extracted from bone fragments to identify the animal and human remains they found. This is a technique known as paleoproteomics. This allows scientists to identify human and animal bones when their shape is unclear or uncertain. Using the same technique, the research team was also able to identify human remains among the bones excavated in his 1930s.
But protein analysis could only identify the bones as belonging to a hominin, a category that includes Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthals. To distinguish between the two, the research team was able to extract fragments of ancient DNA from his 13 identified hominin fossils.
“We confirm that the skeletal fragments belong to Homo sapiens,” study co-author Elena Zavala, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said in a statement. Stated.
“Interestingly, some of the fragments shared the same mitochondrial DNA sequence, even if they were from different excavations,” Zavala added. “This indicates that these fragments belong to the same person or were maternal relatives, linking these new discoveries with fragments from decades ago.”
Radiocarbon dating of fossils and other artifacts in the cave suggests that these early humans lived there for about 45,000 years, making them the oldest known to have lived in northwestern Europe. It turned out to be Homo sapiens.
At that time, the region’s climate was dramatically different, with conditions likely typical of the steppe tundra found in modern-day Siberia. Excavations have revealed the presence of reindeer, cave bears, woolly rhinos, and horses. The researchers also concluded that the caves were primarily used by hibernating cave bears and Denning’s hyenas, and that humans were only periodically present in the caves.
Dorothea myropotamitaki
Extraction of proteins from archaeological bone fragments must be performed in a sterile environment to avoid contamination.
“This shows that even the early Homo sapiens groups, which were dispersed across Eurasia, already had some ability to adapt to such harsh climatic conditions,” said co-authors from Spain. said Sara Pederzani, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of La Laguna who led the paleoclimate study. site. “This is a fascinating and surprising result because until recently, it was thought that resilience to cold climate conditions would not emerge until several thousand years later,” she said, according to a news release.
William E. Banks, a researcher at France’s University of Bordeaux, said the study allows archaeologists to examine sites in unprecedented detail in a new way, pinpointing when they were occupied. He said this shows that his abilities are improving.
“This discovery provides another important piece of the puzzle of a culturally and demographically complex period in Europe,” Banks said in a commentary published with the journal. . I will study. But Banks, who was not involved in the study, added that archaeologists “must be careful not to generalize findings from one or two sites.”
He said recent discoveries suggest that Neanderthals were more culturally and cognitively complex than popular stereotypes, and that archaeologists have in all cases identified key periods before Neanderthal extinction. “It should not necessarily be assumed” that modern humans created more complex styles of stone tools, he said.
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