Homo sapiens was already in northwestern Europe 45 thousand years ago – 01/31/2024 – Science

Despite the cold, the first groups of Homo sapiens ventured into northwestern Europe 45,000 years ago, where they could have lived with Neanderthals thousands of years before this species disappeared from the continent, according to studies published this Wednesday (31).

Until now, there were no records of such ancient traces of modern man in this European region.

The important discovery reformulates the scenario of the colonization of the continent by Homo sapienswhich eventually replaced local Neanderthal populations, like all other archaic human lineages around the world.

In Europe, “this phenomenon of replacement lasted for several thousand years, between the Middle Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic”, paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, explained to AFP. , main author of the three studies published in the journal Nature.

In a first phase, Sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted, although it is not known exactly where or how, since archaeological evidence revealed the presence of distinct cultures in well-defined geographic areas during this transition period.

However, identifying these cultures is a puzzle due to the scarcity of human remains. Paleontologists face, above all, the mystery of the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) culture.

This period is defined by the use of a certain type of carved stone tool, found in several locations north of the Alps, from England to Poland. The LRJ existed for approximately four thousand years, between 45 thousand and 41 thousand years before the Era of Homo sapiens.

A team from the Max Planck Institute excavated one of these sites in Ranis, Germany, between 2016 and 2022, which had already been partially explored in the 1930s.