Protein and DNA residues recovered from bones which were discovered at a depth of 8 meters in a cave revealed that Neanderthals and humans probably lived side by side in northern Europe 45,000 years ago!

Genetic analysis of the fossils, which were found in a cave near the town of Ranis in eastern Germany, has shown that modern humans were the makers of the distinctive leaf-shaped stone tools that archaeologists once believed to have been made by Neanderthals. who lived in Europe until about 40,000 years ago.

Modern humans, or homo sapiens, were not previously known to have lived as far north as the area where the tools were made.

“The location of the cave provides clues to the first movement of Homo sapiens into the higher latitudes of Europe. It turns out that stone objects thought to be Neanderthal creations were actually part of the toolkit of early Homo sapiens.”said the author of the study Jean-Jacques Hublinprofessor at the Collège de France in Paris and director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

“This radically changes our previous knowledge of this period: Homo sapiens arrived in northwestern Europe long before the Neanderthals disappeared in southwestern Europe,” he notes himself.

The discovery means the two groups, which once “crossed,” may have overlapped for several thousand years. It also shows that Homo sapiens, our species, crossed the Alps into the cold climates of northern and central Europe earlier than we thought.

Three studies detailing the discoveries and laboratory analysis were published in the journals Nature and “Nature Ecology & Evolution”.

The type of stone tool found in the town of Ranis has also been found elsewhere in Europe, from Moravia and eastern Poland to the British Isles, according to the studies. Archaeologists call the tool style “Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician,” or “LRJ,” referring to the places where it was first found.

To trace who made the items, the team excavated the Ilsenhöhle cave, near the town of Ranis, from 2016 to 2022.

The researchers used a specific technique to identify the animal and human bones they found. However, the protein analysis could not give definite conclusions and determine whether it is Homo sapiens or Homo neanderthalensis or Neanderthal. To make this distinction, the team was able to extract fragments of ancient DNA from the 13 human bones they identified.

“We confirmed that the skeletal fragments belonged to Homo sapiens”said the study’s co-author Elena Zavalaa postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

“Interestingly, several fragments shared the same mitochondrial DNA sequences – even fragments from different excavations,” Zavala added. “This indicates that the fragments belonged to the same person or were related by mother, linking these new findings to those found decades ago.”

The radio dating of the fossils and other objects in the cave showed that these first humans lived there about 45,000 years ago, making them the first Homo sapiens known to inhabit northwestern Europe. The excavation also revealed the presence of reindeer, cave bears, woolly rhinos and horses.

Recent discoveries suggest that Neanderthals were more culturally and cognitively complex than popular stereotypes indicate, and that archaeologists should not—necessarily—assume that modern humans were making more complex styles of stone tools than that pivotal period before the Neanderthals went extinct. .