The Neanderthals, an extinct human species that is presumed to have an intelligence comparable to ours, disappeared from the face of the Earth about 40,000 years ago after dominating much of Eurasia, including the Iberian Peninsula, for millennia. The causes of their extinction are one of the greatest mysteries of human evolution. If these hominids were sophisticated and had symbolic thought – they cooked, hunted in groups, buried their dead and are even believed to have created art – what could have killed them? Did anatomically modern humans have something to do with its end?
A new study carried out by an international team of researchers may shed light on the circumstances in which it occurred.
that extinction. After studying the tools of a flint workshop attributed to the neanderthals at the site Aranbaltza II, in the Biscayan town of Barrika, scientists concluded that the disappearance of this human species was not sudden. In reality, the place was occupied by a group of Neanderthals who mysteriously abandoned it and were replaced, at least a thousand years later, by a second group that arrived from what is now France. The new occupants, who brought their own lithic industry, also ended up disappearing, probably before we sapiens arrived. Whether those groups in particular moved to another place or were the protagonists of the end of a species, is an enigma.
Arrived from France
Researchers began excavating at Aranbaltza II in 2013 after the surprise appearance in a channeling trench of some tools from the Chatelperronian, a Neanderthal culture from southwestern France. In total, they found more than 5,000 remains, some 43,500 years old, mostly broadheads or knives created with a fairly standardized technique, very different from the jagged Middle Palaeolithic flakes previously found in the region. “The lithic industry that we recovered was very pure, it did not have any kind of mixture, which led us to think that it was something intrusive, not the product of evolution or contact between different groups of Neanderthals,” explains Joseba Ríos Garaizar, from the Archaeological Museum of Bilbao and responsible for the study published this Wednesday in PLOS One.
The researchers concluded that Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals either became extinct or left the region at least 45,000 years ago. “We are still investigating the causes of the disappearance of the first group, although we will probably never be able to fully answer that question,” says the researcher. “We suspect that climate change or a decrease in available resources made the Cantabrian region less interesting for these populations, which were also less numerous and smaller, which has an almost demographic crisis character and could lead to make their chances of survival very difficult,” he argues.
Substitution
Chatelperronian Neanderthals were also drawn to that coastal landscape, which they found unoccupied when they arrived from southwestern France at least a thousand years later. They located their workshop in a privileged place, near an outcrop of good quality flint and then about eight kilometers from the coast. Next to it ran a stream, which still persists, on a sandy beach covered with vegetation. Not far away, although not yet discovered, must have been the settlement where the probably small group warmed themselves with fire and rested. They liked to live outdoors and, although no remains of fauna are preserved, they are known to have hunted deer, bison and reindeer. It is also known from the findings of other sites that had “a complex social life” and a certain “refinement” in the elaboration of symbolic objects. However, they spent very little time there and there is no evidence that they encountered modern humans. “Probably some replaced others,” says the archaeologist.
According to Ríos Garaizar, these findings suggest that Neanderthals were already weakened before the arrival of Sapiens, “although they undoubtedly had a catalytic effect on this process.” Do we finish them off? “It is possible that the hybridization of the two species or the cornering of the Neanderthals in some regions in the south of the peninsula caused the process of extinction of their lineage to gradually develop,” he says. In this way, the last Neanderthal could disappear.
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