London. (EFE) .- A new analysis of remains from 40 archaeological sites, from Russia to Spain, has allowed us to determine that the Neanderthals in Europe coincided with human for a modern period of 2600-5400 years.
From improved radiocarbon dating technique, researchers led by a team from the British University of Oxford detailed in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature that Neanderthals disappeared from Europe about 40,000 years ago.
There was an abrupt extinction, scientists say, but a gradual process that followed their own pace in different parts of the continent.
The new chronology highlights the pattern that followed the disappearance of Neanderthals and “suggests that survived probably some small populations at particular points in Europe before becoming extinct,” said Thomas Higham, head of research.
The millennia when Neanderthals and modern humans agreed on the continent posed “a comprehensive program for the transmission of cultural and symbolic behavior time and to possible genetic exchanges,” says the study.
The researchers describe the Europe of that period of transition between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, as a “mixed population”.
According to the study authors, 45,000 years ago, before begin the process of change, Europe was essentially Neanderthal, with small pockets of modern humans in certain regions.
This distribution changed in the ensuing millennia, an evolution that was forged over generations 25-250, by geography.
The University professor Álvaro Arrizabalaga Basque, one of the researchers involved in the study, noted that while “can not exclude that cultural and genetic exchanges between both groups, “that is the” big question that remains to be confirmed pending in Europe. “
” We do know that there was (exchange) in the Middle East, “he added.
Determine the spatial and temporal relationship between the Neanderthals and Human is essential to understand the process that led to the demise of the former.
technical limitations have been one of the most serious challenges to researchers in this field, since the archaeological remains that are close to the border of 50,000 years as bear little carbon-14 is difficult to obtain precise dating.
For the new study, scientists have re-analyzed samples of key European archaeological sites, in the light of the radiocarbon dating technique with accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS, in English), to determine the Mousterian period , the tools associated with Neanderthals and industry ended in Europe between 41,030 and 39,260 years ago.
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