Without fearing the cold, pioneer groups of Homo sapiens ventured through northwest Europe 45,000 years ago, several thousand years before the Neanderthals disappeared from the continent, according to three studies published this Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Because such ancient traces of Homo sapiens have never before been identified in this European region, the find reframes the history of colonization of the continent by modern humans, who eventually replaced the local Neanderthal populations, like all the others. archaic human lines throughout the world.
During a first phase, Sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe, but it was not known exactly where or how.
The enigma of the Lincombe-Ranis-Jerzmanowice culture
One of the big problems in identifying how they coexisted is the scarcity of human remains. Paleontologists are especially faced with the enigma of what is known as the Lincombe-Ranis-Jerzmanowice (LRJ) culture.
That period is defined by the use of a certain type of carved stone tool, found at various sites north of the Alps, from England to Poland. The LRJ lasted for approximately 4,000 years, between 45,000 and 41,000 years before our era.
Remains found in a cave in Germany
The remains were found in a cave in Ranis (Germany) between 2016 and 2022, which had already been partially explored in the 1930s. In that difficult-to-access place, with the vault collapsed, the researchers found “LRJ” bifacial tools and thousands of associated bone fragments.
The scientists turned to a recent technique called paleoproteomics, which involves extracting proteins, to find out whether they were human or animal bones. They also analyzed bones collected in the 1930s and kept in a museum near Leipzig.
Previous evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens
A dozen human remains underwent radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. Verdict: Homo sapiens was the creator of these tools made a little more than 45,000 years ago.
They were humans with the same characteristics as other conspecifics discovered in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria and Czechia), until now the oldest representatives of our species on the continent.
Homo sapiens populated Europe in successive waves
This means that Homo sapiens, coming from Africa, arrived on the Eurasian continent much earlier than previously thought: “For a long time we had in mind the model of a great wave of Sapiens that devastated Europe and quickly absorbed the Neanderthals towards the end. of these transitional cultures, around 40,000 years before our era, explains paleoanthropologist and lead author Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (Germany).
But, according to the latest discoveries, it seems more likely that Homo sapiens populated the continent in successive waves. During that incursion, 45,000 years ago, Homo sapiens was able to coexist perfectly with its Neanderthal cousins, whose last survivors became extinct in the southwest of the continent about 40,000 years ago.
Resilience to extreme climates
The studies describe “pioneer” groups that dared to face a cold climate, equivalent to that of Siberia or northern modern-day Scandinavia, according to Sarah Pederzani, who led the research on Ranis’s environment.
They lived in small mobile groups, occupying the cave ephemerally, where they consumed the hunted animals (reindeer, horses, etc.).
“How did these individuals from Africa have the idea of heading towards such extreme temperatures?” asks Professor Hublin.
In any case, they had “the technical capacity and adaptability necessary to live in a hostile environment,” he concludes.
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