Modern humans, Homo sapiens, ventured into European Neanderthal territory much earlier than reported so far, as evidenced by fossils and tools from Mandrin Cave, on the Rhone River, in France, according to a study by Science released Wednesday.
So far, archaeological discoveries 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 Sapiens usually 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.
A milk tooth
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 Neronian, which concerns several sites in the Rhone corridor. And leaves in 2016 with his team at the Peabody Museum of Harvard 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 Homo sapiens in Europe. His lead was the right one: a baby tooth, found in the famous “E” layer, came to confirm 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 micro-tomography (a very high-resolution scanner), his verdict is clear: the milk tooth in layer “E” “is the only modern human tooth found in this location”, explains the researcher to the AFP.
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 wall fragments, “which fell directly into the layers, shows that Homo sapiens returned once a year to the cavity, over 40 years”, says Mr. Slimak.
Neanderthal guide Sapiens
Homo sapiens came to this cave just one year after Neanderthals passed through this shelter. When Homo sapiens leaves it definitively, Neanderthal returns there, much later (approximately a thousand years). “At one point the two populations either coexisted in the cave or on the same territory”, concludes 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”, remarks he.
In the end “the appearance of modern humans and the disappearance of Neanderthals is much more complex” than imagined so far, notes 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, 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.