Traces of 54,000-year-old Homo sapiens in France – Finds that “rewrite” European prehistory

Stone tools and a baby tooth found in a cave in southern France dating to about 54,000 years ago are the earliest evidence of the presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Western Europe, much earlier – 10,000 to 12,000 years – from so far estimates of when our ancestors first arrived from Africa. Which – if confirmed – will lead to the rewriting of European prehistory books. The discovery also seems to disprove the well-established notion that Homo sapiens forcibly wiped out the “old” Neanderthals upon their arrival on the European continent, as the two species may have coexisted for several thousand years in the same areas, possibly in peaceful exchanges. and when competition.

The scientists, led by anthropology professor Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse “Jean Zores” and the French National Research Center (CNRS), published the article in the journal Science Advances, according to the BBC, Nature and the “New Scientist”, estimate that these are not Neanderthal remains, but who lived in the same cave before and after Homo sapiens. It is possible that the two species met, although no traces of cultural exchanges were found between them.

The presence of the latter in the Madren Cave in the Rhone Valley, 140 km north of Marseille, is estimated to have lasted only four decades, while that of the Neanderthals for tens of thousands of years. Due to the many other finds at Madren, which will be presented to researchers in the future, Slimak described the cave as “a kind of Pompeian Neanderthal but without catastrophic events”.

To date, the oldest DNA-confirmed traces of Homo sapiens in Europe have been found in a cave in Bulgaria and are about 44,000 years old, while Neanderthals, having lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, largely disappeared about 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of their “cousins” Homo sapiens, although some individual groups seem to have endured for a few thousand more years.

THE Greek professor of paleoanthropology Katerina Harvatis of the German University of Tübingen said the findings appeared to be convincing and subvert the established notion that much of Europe was exclusively Neanderthal territory until about 45,000 years ago.

He noted that the early presence of Homo sapiens in the Madren Cave did not seem to be very successful, as it lasted a while and the Neanderthals returned to the same area. It is recalled that in 2019 Harvati had presented evidence for the existence of Homo sapiens in Greece 210,000 years ago (in the cave Apidima in Mani), a finding for the presence of our ancestors on the European continent much earlier than the French or Bulgarian cave.

“There has not been a single wave of modern humans who have arrived and, they colonized Europe, but probably several attempts were made.What we found is probably one of them and there were probably others we have not found yet.The unanswered question is whether they left the cave to return from where they came from or if “They died there and did not survive for more than a few decades. It is impossible to say.”

Other scientists, such as archaeologist William Banks of the University of Bordeaux and the CNRS, have been more skeptical about whether both the tools and the tooth came from Homo sapiens, as they do not find the data entirely convincing. So far, researchers have not attempted to extract ancient DNA from the tooth to determine if it belongs to Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.

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