Supervolcano That May Have Wiped out Neanderthals Comes to Life Again

Ancient Origins

A huge area of volcanic activity near heavily populated Naples, Italy, is reaching a critical point and scientists think it could erupt. The 12-kilometer (7.46 miles) caldera or volcanic cauldron hasn’t erupted for nearly 500 years, but scientists say the seismic monster is reawakening. Some researchers speculate that when Campi Flegrei, which translates from Italian as Burning Fields, erupted about 39,000 years ago it may have wiped out the Neanderthals. Although there is no definitive evidence for this, the fact that the caldera has the potential to devastate a large region of Italy and could even cause volcanic winter worldwide is not in question.

An 1845 map of Campi Flegrei by the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. (Wikimedia Commons)

The caldera has 24 craters and some large volcanic edifices, most under the Mediterranean Sea. It formed 39,000 years ago during the most catastrophic volcanic explosion in Europe for 200,000 years, says Science Alert.

Scientists call these types of geological feature supervolcanos, which form large fields of volcanic eruptions and spew so much magma from below that they collapse and leave behind a big crater. The supervolcano landscape generates hydrothermal activity, geysers and sulfuric acid.

Campi Flegrei has had just three eruptions—two large ones 39,000 and 12,000 years ago. A “smaller” one in 1538 was so great that it lasted for eight days and put out such huge releases of lava that it formed Monte Nuovo, a new mountain.

Monte Nuovo was formed during an eruption of Campi Flegrei in 1538. ( Wikimedia Commons photo)

One eruption of Campi Flegrei was so huge that researchers speculate it killed off the Neanderthals. Modern Homo sapiens survived because they lived farther away from the volcanic activity, these researchers say.

While the connection of the demise of the Neanderthals remains purely speculative until further evidence can be found, the eruption, which is thought to have spewed almost 1 trillion gallons (3.7 trillion litres) of molten rock onto the surface - along and with just as much sulfur into the atmosphere - is not.

Another reason Homo sapiens may have outlived Neanderthals was because of a population vacuum of Neanderthals in Europe and a revolution in technological and social advancements that people came up with shortly after 40,000 years ago.

Sulfur in a burning landscape at Campi Flegrei near Naples, Italy ( Wikipedia photo /Donar Reiskoffer)

Scientists can’t accurately predict when a volcano will blow, though they monitor volcanoes, especially near populated areas such as Naples with 500,000 people. Volcanic eruption predictions are an imprecise science.

But volcanologist Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and his team are saying Campi Flegrei seems to be nearing the point of eruption and is in a state of critical degassing pressure. Their paper in the journal Nature Communications states:

We propose that magma could be approaching the CDP at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed.

The CDP at Campi Flegrei could result in release of jets of super-hot gases into the atmosphere and could heat rocks and hydrothermal fluids that could cause rock failure and even an eruption.

This phenomenon has been observed at two other active volcanoes, one in Papua New Guinea and one in the Galapagos Islands. “Both showed acceleration in ground deformation before eruption with a pattern similar to that observed at Campi Flegrei,” Chiodini told The Guardian .

There are many uncertainties about this possible volcanic activity, Chiodini told The Washington Post . Campi Flegrei may evolve in both directions, toward conditions of pre-eruption or even to the demise of any volcanic unrest.

Top image: The dramatic eruption of Mt Vesuvius. ( Wikimedia Commons )

By Mark Miller

Deep in a Cave in France Neanderthals Constructed Mysterious Ring Structures 176,000 Years Ago

Ancient Origins

 Not a lot is known about the Neanderthals, but researchers say circular arrangements of 176,000-year-old stalagmites in a cave in France shows they were carrying out some kind of cultural or geometric representations tens of thousands of years before modern Homo sapiens entered Europe.  These structures are unlike anything found previously by archaeologists or anything known from history.
A team of researchers analyzed stalagmites and burnt bones from Bruniquel Cave in France’s Averyron region and found they dated to about 140,000 years before their cousins (we modern humans) arrived on the scene.

Rock Shelter, Bruniquel. Antique wood engraved print. Date of printing 1890. From 'Peoples of the world' by Robert Brown, published by Cassel & Co.

Led by Jacques Jaubert of the University of Bordeaux, the large group of researchers reported their findings in the journal Nature.
“The regular geometry of the stalagmite circles, the arrangement of broken stalagmites and several traces of fire demonstrate the anthropogenic origin of these constructions,” they wrote.  “What was the function of these structures at such a great distance from the cave entrance? Why are most of the fireplaces found on the structures rather than directly on the cave floor? Based on most Upper Palaeolithic cave incursions, we could assume that they represent some kind of symbolic or ritual behavior, but could they rather have served for an unknown domestic use or simply as a refuge? Future research will try to answer these questions.”
Bruniquel Cave closed naturally during the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended about 10,000 years ago, and had not been disturbed since people discovered it in 1990. The cave is in southwest France. Spelunkers dug a narrow chamber through 30 meters (about 100 feet) of earth at the entrance to reach the cave’s interior.

The Cavern of Bruniquel, briefly noticed by Marcel de Serres in the subjoined passage from his work 'Sur les Cavernes a Ossemens', is situated in a grand escarpment of the Jurassic limestone bordering the river Aveyron, opposite the village of Bruniquel. Image and text: Owen (1864)

The stalagmite arrangements are 336 meters (1,100 feet) from the entrance. The cave has many speleothems, or minerals deposited by the action of water.
“The regular geometry of the stalagmite circles, the arrangement of broken stalagmites and several traces of fire demonstrate the anthropogenic origin of these constructions,” the authors wrote. They said they are among the oldest-known human-arranged structures.
The two rings and six piles of stalagmites range from a diameter of a half-meter (1.8 feet) to 2.6 m (8.53 feet). The stalagmites, about 400 of them, are both whole and broken and are close in size, ranging from 29.5 to 34.4 cm (11.614 inches to 13.543 inches). Altogether, the stalagmites weigh about 2.4 tons.

The scientists made a 3D reconstruction of the manmade structures.

The Neanderthals burned fires inside the stalagmite rings only, not outside, a practice that puzzled the researchers. But the extinct Neanderthals were the first to use fire, about 800,000 years ago. The article states:

“A critical review of all known remains of fire in Europe concluded that Neanderthals were the first to commonly use fire, and in particular at the end of the Middle Pleistocene when they began to cook and produce new materials such as organic glue and haft tools.”

The article said that the Neanderthals carried out tasks to arrange the circles, which points to social organization. The elaborateness of the circles, plus the fact that the stalagmites are partially calibrated (deliberately sized), plus the heated zones, indicate a level of social organization that researchers did not think Neanderthals were capable of, the article states.
Another thing that is different about this find as opposed to others from the Paleolithic is that people, even in Africa, have not been known to live deep in caves, though during the Late Stone Age various people were living in cave entrances. The earliest known use of deep cave use previously, also in France in Chauvet Cave, was about 36,000 years ago. There, hominids of some type made beautiful cave paintings.

Chauvet cave paintings (public domain)

Neanderthals are modern humans’ closest extinct relatives. They evolved about 400,000 years ago and died out around 40,000 years ago, scientists have estimated. They lived in Europe and western and central Asia. Their brains were about equal in size to or even a bit larger than Homo sapiens’ brains.
Neanderthals used tools, lived in shelters and made clothing. They hunted large animals and also ate plants. They also fashioned ornamental or symbolic artifacts.
“There is evidence that Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead and occasionally even marked their graves with offerings, such as flowers. No other primates, and no earlier human species, had ever practiced this sophisticated and symbolic behavior,” says the Smithsonian.
The U.S. government’s National Institutes of Health genome department finished sequencing the entire Neanderthal genome in 2010 (article).
Top image: Archaeologists say the circular structures discovered deep in a cave in southwestern France were constructed by Neanderthals 176,000 years ago. (Etienne Fabre / SSAC)
By Mark Miller

Neanderthals wore eagle talons as jewelry 130,000 years ago

Fox News

Megan Gannon

 

The eight eagle talons from Krapina arranged with an eagle phalanx that was also found at the site. (Luka Mjeda, Zagreb)

Long before they shared the landscape with modern humans, Neanderthals in Europe developed a sharp sense of style, wearing eagle claws as jewelry, new evidence suggests.
Researchers identified eight talons from white-tailed eagles — including four that had distinct notches and cut marks — from a 130,000-year-old Neanderthal cave in Croatia. They suspect the claws were once strung together as part of a necklace or bracelet.

 

"It really is absolutely stunning," study author David Frayer, an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas, told Live Science. "It fits in with this general picture that's emerging that Neanderthals were much more modern in their behavior." [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]
The talons were first excavated more than 100 years ago at a famous sandstone rock-shelter site called Krapina in Croatia. There, archaeologists found more than 900 Neanderthal bones dating back to a relatively warm, interglacial period about 120,000 to 130,000 years ago. They also found Mousterian stone tools (a telltale sign of Neanderthal occupation), a hearth and the bones of rhinos and cave bears, but no signs of modern human occupation. Homo sapiens didn't spread into Europe until about 40,000 years ago.
The eagle talons were all found in the same archaeological layer, Frayer said, and they had been studied a few times before. But no one noticed the cut marks until last year, when Davorka Radov?i?, curator of the Croatian Natural History Museum, was reassessing some of the Krapina objects in the collection.

The researchers don't know exactly how the talons would have been assembled into jewelry. But Frayer said some facets on the claws look quite polished — perhaps made smooth from being wrapped in some kind of fiber, or from rubbing against the surface of the other talons. There were also nicks in three of the talons that wouldn't have been created during an eagle's life, Frayer said.
Now extinct, Neanderthals were the closest known relatives of modern humans. They lived in Eurasia from about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago. Recent research has uncovered evidence that Neanderthals may have engaged in some familiar behaviors, such as burying their dead, adorning themselves with feathers and even making art.
But scientists debate the extent to which Neanderthals were capable of abstract thinking. Deliberately making or wearing jewelry would suggest some degree of symbolic thought, as well as planning, Frayer explained. And the age of the talons suggests that if the Neanderthals were indeed wearing jewelry, they didn't pick up on the trend from modern humans.
"Eagle talons are not easy to find," Frayer said. "My guess is that they were catching the birds live — which also isn't easy."
The findings were published March 11 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Did a Volcano Wipe Out the Neanderthals?

by Tia Ghose
Live Science

From an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, US. Credit: Flickr/Ricardo Giaviti, CC BY-NC-SA

A massive volcanic eruption about 40,000 years ago probably wasn't big enough to wipe out the Neanderthals as previous research suggested, new research finds.
Although the eruption, which occurred in what is now Italy, blanketed nearby areas in lava and ash, it wouldn't have lowered temperatures enough throughout Europe to be a significant cause of the Neanderthals' demise, said study co-author Benjamin Black, a geologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
Exactly why the Neanderthals disappeared is a mystery. "Neanderthal decline started well before the eruption, so if there were just a few scattered populations that were hanging on at the brink, it's hard to say what might have pushed them over the edge," Black told Live Science.

Long, slow decline
Neanderthals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago, and at its peak, the Neanderthal population numbered about 70,000. But the population slowly dwindled and Homo neanderthaliswent extinct between 35,000 and 41,000 years ago. Some scientists have proposed that humans killed off the rival hominins, while others say Neanderthals interbred with modern humans until the group was completely absorbed. [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]
Another controversial theory has proposed that the Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption about 40,000 years ago, near modern-day Naples, dramatically cooled the climate.
To test that theory, Black and his colleagues used existing data on rocks from the eruption and combined those with climate models. Their new model predicted how sulfur — which absorbs and scatters sunlight and can therefore cool the climate — was carried through the atmosphere over Europe after the eruption.
The team found that the climate would have cooled at most about 9 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (5 to 10 degrees Celsius). This certainly would have been a cold snap, but such a temperature swing was still within range of what the Neanderthals would have routinely experienced.
What's more, Neanderthals were already extinct in Italy at that time, and the temperature change in other parts of Europe would have been even more modest, Black said.
The data suggests the eruption wasn't a major factor in the Neanderthals' extinction, Black said.
Case closed?
"I agree with the opinion that it would not have been cold enough after the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption to affect life seriously," Stephen Self, a volcanologist at the U.S.-Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science an email.
But not everyone thinks the case is closed.
"It always strikes me as odd that scientists still keep looking for the one parameter/smoking gun to explain the story, when reality tells us that the impact of natural events is a combination of a series of complex events, and when the combination is unfavorable the effects can be big," Thorvaldur Thordarson, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland, told Live Science in an email.
For instance, the huge amounts of sulfur released in the eruption could also have altered air circulation patterns, meaning the climate models that are based on current circulation patterns might not tell the whole story of what happened during the eruption, said Thordarson, who was not involved in the new study.
Aside from providing insight into the demise of the Neanderthals, the new study could also shed light on our species' ability to adapt to changes in climate, Black said.
"It's kind of cool to think about this study as a way of understanding how resilient human beings are when their environment changes very suddenly, which is something that's happening right now," Black said. "The difference is that 40,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans did not have some of the luxuries that we have today."
The findings were presented Dec. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Ancient human bone helps date our first sex with Neanderthals

Ian Sample

Oldest genome sequence of a modern human suggests Homo sapiens first bred with Neanderthals 50,000-60,000 years ago

Neanderthal DNA specialist Svante Pääbo examines the anatomically modern human femur, found near Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia. Photograph: Bence Viola/MPI EVA

An ancient leg bone found by chance on the bank of a Siberian river has helped scientists work out when early humans interbred with our extinct cousins, the Neanderthals.
A local ivory carver spotted the bone sticking out of sediments while fossil hunting in 2008 along the Irtysh river near the settlement of Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia. The bone was later identified as a human femur, but researchers have learned little else about the remains until now.
The importance of the find became clear when a team led by Svante Pääbo and Janet Kelso at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig ran a series of tests on the fragile material.
Radiocarbon dating of pieces of the leg bone put the remains at around 45,000 years old. The team went on to extract DNA from the bone, which allowed them to reconstruct the oldest modern human genome ever.
The genetic material showed that the thigh bone belonged to a man who carried about 2% Neanderthal DNA, a similar amount to people from Europe and Asia today. The presence of Neanderthal DNA meant that interbreeding between them and modern humans must have taken place at least 45,000 years ago.
But amid the DNA were more clues to when humans and Neanderthals reproduced. Strands of Neanderthal DNA found in modern humans can act like a biological clock, because they are fragmented more and more with each generation since interbreeding happened. The strands of Neanderthal DNA in the Siberian man were on average three times longer than those seen in people alive today. Working backwards, the scientists calculate that Neanderthals contributed to the man’s genetic ancestry somewhere between 7,000 and 13,000 years before he lived.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that humans and Neanderthals had reproductive sex around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, though other couplings might well have happened later. Until now, estimates for interbreeding have varied enormously, ranging from 37,000 to 86,000 years ago.
“What we think may be the case is that the ancestors of the Ust’-Ishim man met and interbred with Neanderthals during the initial early admixture event that is shared by all non-Africans at between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, and perhaps somewhere in the middle East,” Kelso told the Guardian.
But a small number of fragments of Neanderthal DNA in the man’s genome were longer than expected given how many generations had passed. Those might be evidence of his ancestors breeding with Neanderthals closer to the time he was born.
“Everyone outside Africa has about same amount of Neanderthal DNA. It seems to be something early on where one really mixed with Neanderthals in a serious way,” said Pääbo. “Since that happened I wouldn’t be surprised if, now and again, one did it here and there later on too.”
Prior to the latest study, the oldest modern human genome came from the 24,000-year-old remains of a boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in easterbn Siberia.
Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said the ancient DNA from the Siberian man sheds fresh light on the story of early human migrations out of Africa. In the 1920s and 30s, researchers found 100,000-year-old skeletons of modern humans in caves in Israel. The remains may have belonged to a group of humans that left Africa and ultimately went on to colonise southern Asia, Australia and New Guinea. But an alternative explanation is that they were from a migration that failed to go much further. According to that view, the more successful dispersal of humans out of Africa happened much later, around 60,000 years ago.
The latest findings suggest that the ancestors of modern Australians, who carry a similar amount of Neanderthal DNA to Europeans and Asians, are unlikely to have picked up their own Neanderthal DNA before 60,000 years ago. “The ancestors of Australasians must have been part of a late, rather than early, dispersal through Neanderthal territory,” Stringer said.
“While it is still possible that modern humans did traverse southern Asia before 60,000 years ago, those groups could not have made a significant contribution to the surviving modern populations outside of Africa, which contain evidence of interbreeding with Neanderthals,” he added
The Guardian
 

Cave Carving May Be 1st Known Example of Neanderthal Rock Art

By Megan Gannon

This abstract cave carving is possibly the first known example of Neanderthal rock art. The etching covers an area of about 47 square inches (300 square centimeters). Credit: Stewart Finlayson

Around 39,000 years ago, a Neanderthal huddled in the back of a seaside cave at Gibraltar, safe from the hyenas, lions and leopards that might have prowled outside. Under the flickering light of a campfire, he or she used a stone tool to carefully etch what looks like a grid or a hashtag onto a natural platform of bedrock.
Archaeologists discovered this enigmatic carving during an excavation of Gorham's Cave two years ago. They had found Neanderthal cut marks on bones and tools before, but they had never seen anything like this. The researchers used Neanderthal tools to test how this geometric design was made — and to rule out the possibility the "artwork" wasn't just the byproduct of butchery. They found that recreating the grid was painstaking work.
"This was intentional — this was not somebody doodling or scratching on the surface," said study researcher Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum. But the discovery poses much more elusive questions: Did this engraving hold any symbolic meaning? Can it be considered art?
Close cousins
Neanderthals roamed Eurasia from around 200,000 to 30,000 years ago, when they mysteriously went extinct. They were the closest known relatives of modern humans, and recent research has suggested that Neanderthals might have behaved more like Homo sapiens than previously thought: They buried their dead, they used pigments and feathers to decorate their bodies, and they may have even organized their caves.
Despite a growing body of evidence suggesting Neanderthals may have been cognitively similar to modern humans, a lack of art seemed to be the "the last bastion" for the argument that Neanderthals were much different from us, Finlayson said.
"Art is something else — it's an indication of abstract thinking," Finlayson told Live Science.
Archaeologists recently pushed back the date of hand stencil paintings found at El Castillo cave in northern Spain to 40,800 years ago, which opens the possibility that Neanderthals created this artwork. But there is no solid archaeological evidence to link Neanderthals to the paintings. [See Photos of the Ancient El Castillo Cave Art]
Gorham's Cave

Gorham's Cave may be the last known site of Neanderthal occupation before these hominids went extinct. In 2006, a carbon-dating study of charcoal from hearths inside the cave suggested that Neanderthals might have survived there until 28,000 years ago.
Credit: Clive Finlayson

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In Gorham's Cave, Finlayson and colleagues were surprised to find a series of deeply incised parallel and crisscrossing lines when they wiped away the dirt covering a bedrock surface. The rock had been sealed under a layer of soil that was littered with Mousterian stone tools (a style long linked to Neanderthals). Radiocarbon dating indicated that this soil layer was between 38,500 and 30,500 years old, suggesting the rock art buried underneath was created sometime before then. [See Photos of Europe's Oldest Rock Art]
Gibraltar is one of the most famous sites of Neanderthal occupation. At Gorham's Cave and its surrounding caverns, archaeologists have found evidence that Neanderthals butchered seals, roasted pigeons and plucked feathers off birds of prey. In other parts of Europe, Neanderthals lived alongside humans — and may have even interbred with them. But 40,000 years ago, the southern Iberian Peninsula was a Neanderthal stronghold. Modern humans had not spread into the area yet, Finlayson said.
To test whether they were actually looking at an intentional design, the researchers decided to try to recreate the grid on smooth rock surfaces in the cave using actual stone tools left behind in a spoil heap by archaeologists who had excavated the site in the 1950s. More than 50 stone-tool incisions were needed to mimic the deepest line of the grid, and between 188 and 317 total strokes were probably needed to create the entire pattern, the researchers found. Their findings were described yesterday (Sept. 1) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Finlayson and his colleagues also tried to cut pork skin with the stone tools, to test whether the lines were merely the incidental marks left behind after the Neanderthals had butchered meat. But they couldn't replicate the engraving.
"You cannot control the groove if you're cutting through meat, no matter how hard you try," Finlayson said. "The lines go all over the place."

A simple grid is no Venus figurine
The Neanderthals' brand of abstract expressionism might not have impressed Homo sapiens art critics of the day.
"It's very basic. It's very simple," said Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "It's not a Venus. It's not a bison. It's not a horse."
By the late Stone Age, modern humans who settled in Europe were already dabbling in representational art. At least a dozen different species of animals — including horses, mammoths and cave lions — are depicted in the Chauvet Cave paintings, which are up to 32,000 years old. The anatomically explicit Venus figurine discovered at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany dates back to 35,000 years ago. Other busty female statuettes — the Venus of Galgenberg and the Venus of Dolní Věstonice — date back to about 30,000 years ago.
"There is a huge difference between making three lines that any 3-year-old kid would be able to make and sculpting a Venus," Hublin, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.
Hublin said this discovery doesn't close the question of Neanderthals' cognitive skills. Proof that Neanderthals were capable of making a deliberate rock carving isn't evidence that they were regularly making art, he said.
"My own feeling is that if Neanderthals regularly used symbols, and given their longtime occupation throughout large parts of the Old World, we probably would have found clearer evidence by now," said Harold Dibble, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who also was not involved in the study.
Dibble said he was convinced these markings were deliberate, but scientists need "more than a few scratches — deliberate or not — to identify symbolic behavior on the part of Neanderthals."
"Symbols, by definition, have meanings that are shared by a group of people, and because of that, they are often repeated," Dibble wrote in an email. "By itself, this is a unique example and without any intrinsic meaning … the question is not 'Could it be symbolic?' but rather 'Was it symbolic?' And to demonstrate that, it would be very important to have repeated examples."

Live Science

Humans Did Not Wipe Out the Neanderthals, New Research Suggests

By Charles Q. Choi,

Credit: Mauro Cutrona View full size image

Neanderthals went extinct in Europe about 40,000 years ago, giving them millennia to coexist with modern humans culturally and sexually, new findings suggest.
This research also suggests that modern humans did not cause Neanderthals to rapidly go extinct, as some researchers have previously suggested, scientists added.
Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, and lived in Europe and Asia. Recent findings suggest that Neanderthals were closely related enough to interbreed with ancestors of modern humans — about 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone outside Africa is Neanderthal in origin.

It has long been uncertain when Neanderthals went extinct, and there has been much debate over whether interactions with modern humans might have driven their disappearance. Neanderthals entered Europe before modern humans did, and prior studies had suggested the last of the Neanderthals held out there on the Iberian Peninsula until about 35,000 years ago, potentially sharing the region with modern humans for millennia. However, more recent findings suggested that some Neanderthal fossils from Europe might be thousands of years older than previously thought, raising the possibility that Neanderthals went extinct before modern humans arrived in Europe starting about 42,000 years ago. [The 10 Biggest Mysteries of the First Humans]
To help solve the mystery of when Neanderthals went extinct, scientists analyzed bone, charcoal and shell materials from 40 archaeological sites from Russia to Spain. They employed advanced techniques for more precise dating of these specimens that involved ultra-filtering molecules from bone samples for examination and removing organic contaminants that could make specimens seem younger than they actually are.
The new findings suggest that Neanderthals disappeared from Europe between about 41,000 and 39,000 years ago.
"I think that, for the first time, we have a reliable extinction date for Neanderthals," said study author Tom Higham, a radiocarbon scientist at the University of Oxford in England. "This has eluded us for decades."
The Neanderthal extinction occurred across sites ranging from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Coast of Europe. The timing and geography suggest Neanderthals may have overlapped with modern humans for 2,600 to 5,400 years, opening the door for genetic and cultural exchanges between the two groups for millennia.

A site in Abric Romani, Spain, where Neanderthal remains were found.
Credit: Thomas Higham

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These findings suggest that modern humans did not rapidly replace Neanderthals in Europe — say, via violent means. Rather, the Neanderthal extinction "might have been more complex and drawn out than previously thought," Higham told Live Science.
There is some genetic evidence that Neanderthals in Western Europe may have experienced declining genetic diversity about the time when the first modern humans began arriving on the continent, Higham said. "This might mean that they were fading out at this time, although, of course, our evidence suggests that there was a long period of overlap during which this occurred," he said.
Neanderthals may not even have truly disappeared, but instead have been assimilated into modern human populations. "We know, of course, that we have a genetic legacy from Neanderthals of about 1 to 2 percent, so there was interbreeding," Higham said.
One mystery regarding sex between Neanderthals and modern humans is that the greatest amount of interbreeding between the two lineages is currently thought to have occurred about 77,000 to 114,000 years ago, preceding any potential interbreeding in Europe. However, Higham noted more recent as-yet-unpublished data suggest the interbreeding events occurred about 55,000 to 60,000 years ago, more in tune with interbreeding scenarios involving Europe. "What is needed is more genetic analysis of human bone from this transitional period in Europe," Higham said.
In the future, the researchers plan to extend their work into Eastern Europe and wider Eurasia to widen their data set and look for more patterns in the data pertaining to the Neanderthal extinction and the spread of modern humans, Higham said.
The scientists detailed their findings in the Aug. 21 issue of the journal Nature.
http://www.livescience.com/47460-neanderthal-extinction-revealed.html

Neanderthals ate barbecued pigeon

Ian Sample

Charred bones suggest our ancient relatives cooked the ancestors of feral pigeons on the embers of their fires

Neanderthals living near the sea in Gibraltar are known to have eaten seals, dolphins, shellfish – and now pigeon. Photograph: Nikola Solic/Reuters

Neanderthals snacked on pigeons that they had toasted on open fires, according to researchers, adding to the menu of foods known to be eaten by our closest ancient relatives.
Leftovers of Neanderthal feasts were discovered in sediments that built up over millennia in the huge Gorham's Cave on the east face of Gibraltar, where generations of Neanderthals sheltered for nearly 100,000 years.
Workers at the site unearthed a haul of pigeon bones and found that some bore tooth marks, cuts from stone tools or signs of charring, perhaps created when the meat was left to cook on the glowing embers of a fire.
Most of the tell-tale marks were on pigeon wing and leg bones where much of the meat was to be had. Some of the thicker bones had tiny puncture marks from smaller, needle-like bones, which can happen when chicken wings are twisted apart to get at the meat.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that Neanderthals had more on their minds at dinner time than large mammals. Those living in the caves of Gibraltar left behind butchered bones from seals and dolphins, and even had shucks for prising open shellfish.
A rock dove bone with cut marks found in Gorham’s Cave. Photograph: Ruth Blasco et al/Scientific Reports "The picture that is emerging is that Neanderthals had a diverse larder outside their cave window and they were exploiting all these things," said Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, who took part in the latest study. In June, researchers at MIT reported evidence from 50,000-year-old Neanderthal poo that those living in southern Spain ate plants too.
Finlayson's team decided to check whether birds were on the menu after they unearthed piles of bird bones at Gorham's Cave, where excavations have been going on for the past 25 years. At the latest count, 150 ancient bird species had been identified from bones found in the cave sediments.
Today, the cave sits squarely on the shore, beneath a spectacular cliff face that rises up more than 400 metres. But when Neanderthals occupied the cave, sea levels were lower and the sea may have been several kilometres away. From the entrance, the occupants would have looked out on a sandy plain broken up by wetlands and open areas where stone pine and juniper grew.
The majority of bird bones at Gorham's Cave belong to rock doves, the wild ancestors of modern feral pigeons. For the latest study, the researchers looked at 1,724 rock dove bones found in sediments ranging from 67,000 to 28,000 years old.
Caves on the east face of Gibraltar. All have evidence of Neanderthal occupation. Photograph: Natural History Museum, London Close examination of the bones found cut marks on 28 pigeon bones and tooth marks on 15 that dated from Neanderthal times. Other bones had burn marks. The more recent remains had similar marks made by modern humans who lived in the cave when the Neanderthals died out. While only a small portion of the bones had human marks, Finlayson said even those were unexpected.
"When you consider that pigeons are quite small, it is amazing that any cut marks should appear," he said. Neanderthals could have pulled pigeons apart, unlike larger animals, without needing to cut them up first. "Maybe they are defleshing the animal and the stone knife slips and leaves a mark," he added.
Burn marks left some of the bones unevenly discoloured, which may have happened when wing or leg bones were cooked. "We think they are putting them on embers in the fire. If you have a bone with lots of muscle on one side, the bone more exposed to the fire becomes more cremated," said Finlayson.
The researchers say the oldest bones they studied cannot have been damaged by modern humans. "There is absolutely no doubt that this was the Neanderthals. And they could not have learned this from modern humans because there weren't any modern humans in Europe 67,000 years ago. They must have come up with this on their own," Finlayson said. A report on the work entitled "The earliest pigeon fanciers" appears in Nature Scientific Reports.
What the scientists cannot explain is how they managed to bag so many birds. Rock doves nest on cliff faces and the Neanderthals may have climbed up and raided the birds' nests. But Finlayson is doubtful of that: there are simply too many bones, he said.
Rock doves are the ancestors of feral pigeons, which nowadays are more likely to be fed than eaten. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images "I'm speculating, but I think they must have had snares or nets or some other trapping techniques that were made from perishable materials such as grasses and fibres," he said. "But it would be very difficult to find traces of those."
Researchers now plan to examine thousands of other bones unearthed at the site to see if Neanderthals were partial to other kinds of feathered food.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/07/neanderthals-barbecued-pigeon-gibraltar
 

Tibetans Thrive at High Altitudes Thanks to Neanderthal Cousin

By Charles Q. Choi

A researcher collects a blood sample from an ethnic Tibetan man participating in a DNA study looking into mutations that allow Tibetans to live at high altitudes. Credit: Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI-Shenzhen) photo

Genetic mutations from an extinct human lineage help Tibetans and Sherpas live at high altitudes, researchers say.
The new findings add to growing evidence that interbreeding with other human lineages provided genetic variations that helped modern humans adapt as they spread across the world.
As modern humans migrated out of Africa, they had to adapt to many new environments. One noteworthy adaptation was of Tibetans adjusting to the thin air of the Tibetan plateau, which at about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in altitude has oxygen levels just 60 percent that of air at sea level. For instance, when at high altitudes, women who come from low altitudes usually have problems with childbirth, such as preeclampsia, which is potentially dangerous high blood pressure during pregnancy.

"Tibetans have a really good example of a human adaptation to a new environment," said study co-author Rasmus Nielsen, a population and evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Recent studies revealed how Tibetans adapted to high altitudes — a pattern of mutations in the gene EPAS1, which influences levels of hemoglobin, the protein in blood that carries oxygen around the body. Although most people experience a rise in hemoglobin levels at high altitudes, Tibetans only increase their hemoglobin levels a limited amount — too much hemoglobin in the blood can lead to a greater risk of heart disease.

The thin air of the Tibetan Plateau, which resides at 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in altitude, holds just 60 percent of the oxygen found at sea level.
Credit: NASA

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To learn more about human evolution, Nielsen and his colleagues investigated how Tibetans might have developed their adaptation. Frustratingly, the research team's computer models could not at first explain how Tibetans evolved their pattern of EPAS1 mutations as quickly as they apparently did.
Now, the scientists find Tibetans apparently inherited this pattern of mutations, or haplotype, from a recently discovered extinct lineage of humans known as the Denisovans.
"Adapting to a new environment may take a long time, so sometimes it might have been easier for the ancestors of modern humans to pick up helpful mutations from another human lineage adapted to that environment, such as the Denisovans," Nielsen told Live Science. "This raises the possibility that such a process may have happened many, many other times in human evolution."
Although modern humans are the only surviving human lineage, others also once walked the Earth. These included Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, and the Denisovans, the first evidence of which was discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia in 2008.
Recent analysis of DNA from Denisovan fossils revealed the ancestors of modern humans apparently interbred with Denisovans, whose genetic footprint extended from Siberia to the Pacific Islands of Oceania. About 0.2 percent of DNA of mainland Asians and Native Americans is Denisovan in origin.
The researchers looked for the Tibetan pattern of EPAS1 mutations in 26 different modern human populations across the world, as well as in Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes. They found only Denisovans possessed this haplotype too, as did a small percentage of Han Chinese. This suggests the ancestors of Tibetans inherited this pattern of mutations either from Denisovans or relatives of Denisovans.
The researchers suggest this pattern of mutations might also exist in other Asian populations adapted to high altitudes. These include the Sherpas of Nepal and certain Mongolian populations.
Although some modern human groups in the Pacific Islands possess more Denisovan DNA than Tibetans, those groups do not possess the pattern of EPAS1 mutations seen in Tibetans. "We think modern humans inherited this haplotype from Denisovans a long time ago, but it was of more use to the Tibetans, and so spread among their population," Nielsen said. "In Pacific Islander groups such as Melanesians, this haplotype was probably not as useful, and so was not preserved over time."
The scientists cautioned these findings do not suggest that Tibetans inherited these genes from mythical creatures known as yetis, nor that Denisovans are yetis. "There's already been speculation that Denisovans are yetis on the Internet," Nielsen said.

http://www.livescience.com/46636-how-tibetans-survive-high-altitude.html

Neanderthals aren't grunting, club-wielding idiots – we are

For years our ancestors have been the victim of an ugly stereotype, so let's start their rebranding here

Martha Gill

'People had been comparing Neanderthals to their successors, rather than their contemporaries. Which is rather like assuming I am more advanced than my parents because I know how to work an iPhone.' Photograph: Jose A Astor/Alamy

They've long been maligned as grunting, club-wielding idiots, but apparently we've got Neanderthals all wrong. Misled by their simple tools (clubs) and simple language (grunting) we have stereotyped them as primitive beings – but this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, according to recent research, Neanderthals were no less intelligent than their modern human contemporaries.
After careful study of archaeological records, scientists in the Netherlands found evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were just as advanced in culture, weaponry and hunting as our human forebears. According to those scientists, the misunderstanding came about because people had been comparing Neanderthals to their successors, who had more advanced tools, rather than their contemporaries. Which is rather like assuming I am more advanced than my parents because I know how to work an iPhone. But this doesn't make my parents any less intelligent … just obsolete and unable to function in this modern, fast-paced world.
So, what we have here is an ugly, ugly stereotype; a stereotype that needs to be quashed. As ever, the Guardian is the perfect place to start that process – and perhaps even to "rebrand" the Neanderthal. After all, when you really think about it, aren't we the real club-wielding prehistoric creatures?
Take some of our most pressing modern concerns. To pick just one example, let's look at the unpalatable truth about quinoa. All evidence suggests that Neanderthal food was both organic and locally sourced. But unlike modern man, Neanderthals were not "consciously ethical" consumers so preoccupied with "personal health, animal welfare and reducing their carbon 'foodprint'" that they drove up the price of a staple grain beyond the grasp of local Bolivians. No.
Not for them, either, the errors of cupcake fascism. They refrained from such products which, as has been pointed out, "treat their audience as children, and more specifically the children of the middle classes – perfect special snowflakes full of wide-eyed wonder and possibility" and thereby "succeed as expressions of a desire on behalf of consumers to always and for ever be children, by telling consumers not only that this is OK, but also that it is, to a real degree, possible." Which was really wise of them.
And neither were Neanderthal women held up to ridiculously high beauty standards. They were not impelled to shave their legs in order to live up to unreachable social ideals concocted by a controlling patriarchy.
And finally, Neanderthals had the skills that will really matter post-rewilding. When George Monbiot has his way and wolves, bears, bison and lynx roam Britain (sheep cast finally into the furthest pit of hell), we'll be relying on our hunting nous. Only then, as we square up to a hungry grizzly, will we know who the club-wielding idiots truly are.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/neanderthals-arent-grunting-club-wielding-idiots-stereotype

Neanderthals cleared of driving mammoths over cliff in mass slaughter

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/28/neanderthals-driving-mammoths-cliff-jersey

New evidence suggests it would have been impossible to stampede mammoths to their deaths at site in Jersey 

• Ian Sample, science correspondent
• theguardian.com, Friday 28 February 2014 09.44 EST

Researchers doubt mammoths would ever have ventured up to the high, rocky plateau where Neanderthals were alleged to have chased them. Photograph: Getty

Heaps of mammoth and woolly rhino bones found piled up at the foot of a cliff were thought to be the grim results of Neanderthals driving the beasts over the edge.

The piles of bones are a major feature at La Cotte de St Brelade on Jersey, one of the most spectacular Neanderthal sites in Europe. But the claim that they mark the remains of mass slaughter has been all but ruled out by a fresh investigation.

Researchers have found that the plateau that ends at the cliff edge was so rocky and uneven that mammoths and other weighty beasts would never have ventured up there. Even if the creatures had clambered so high, the Neanderthals would have had to chase them down a steep dip and back up the other side long before the animals reached the cliff edge and plunged to their doom.

"I can't imagine a way in which Neanderthals would have been able to force mammoths down this slope and then up again before they even got to the edge of the headland," said Beccy Scott, an archaeologist at the British Museum. "And they're unlikely to have got up there in the first place."

Hundreds of thousands of stone tools and bone fragments have been uncovered at the Jersey site where Neanderthals lived on and off for around 200,000 years. The site was apparently abandoned from time to time when the climate cooled, forcing the Neanderthals back to warmer territory.

Scott and her colleagues drew on a survey of the seabed that stretches away from the cliff to reconstruct the landscape when the Neanderthals lived there. The land, now submerged under higher sea levels, was cut with granite ravines, gullies and dead-end valleys – a terrain perfect for stalking and ambushing prey.

"The site would have been an ideal vantage point for Neanderthal hunters. They could have looked out over the open plain and watched mammoths, woolly rhinos and horses moving around. They could see what was going on, and move out and ambush their prey," said Scott. Details of the study are published in the journal Antiquity.

The researchers have an alternative explanation for the bone heaps. Neanderthals living there may have brought the bones there after hunts, or from scavenged carcasses, and used them for food, heating and even building shelters. Older sediments at the site are rich with burnt bone and charcoal, suggesting the bones were used as fuel. The heaps of bones were preserved when Neanderthals last abandoned the site, and a fine dust of silt blew over and preserved the remains.

Archaeologists have investigated the site at La Cotte de St Brelade since the mid-19th century. More artefacts have been unearthed here than at all the other Neanderthal sites in the British Isles put together.

The exposed coastal site, one of the last resting places of the Neanderthals, was battered by fierce storms in February, raising fears that ancient remains at the site had been destroyed.