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rfmcdonaldAdvances in radiocarbon dating means, among other things, that the age fossils dating back to the Ice Age has been significantly underestimated.
As points out, this advance has certain implications for the coexistences of homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neandertalensis, i.e. that there might not have been much coexistence.
We didn't co-exist for long, it seems.
Two Neandertal fossils excavated from Vindija Cave in Croatia in 1998, believed to be the last surviving Neandertals, may be 3,000-4,000 years older than originally thought.
An international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has redated the two Neandertals from Vindija Cave. The results were published in the Jan. 2-6 early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Other scientists involved were Tom Higham and Christopher Bronk Ramsey of the Oxford University radiocarbon laboratory, Ivor Karavanic of the University of Zagreb and Fred Smith of Loyola University.
The resultant ages are between 32,000-33,000 years old, and perhaps slightly older.
In 1998, the fossils had been radiocarbon dated to 28,000-29,000 years ago.
As points out, this advance has certain implications for the coexistences of homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neandertalensis, i.e. that there might not have been much coexistence.
Rather than taking some 7,000 years to colonize Europe from Africa, the reinterpreted data shows the process may only have taken 5,000 years, scientist Paul Mellars from Cambridge University said in the science journal Nature on Wednesday.
"The same chronological pattern points to a substantially shorter period of chronological and demographic overlap between the earliest ... modern humans and the last survivors of the preceding Neanderthal populations," he wrote.
The reassessment is based on advances in eliminating modern carbon contamination from ancient bone fragments and recalibration of fluctuations in the pattern of the earth's original carbon 14 content.
Populations of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans first appeared in the near eastern region some 45,000 years ago and slowly expanded into southeastern Europe.
Previously it was thought that this spread took place between 43,000 and 36,000 years ago, but the re-evaluated data suggests that it actually happened between 46,000 and 41,000 years ago -- starting earlier and moving faster.
We didn't co-exist for long, it seems.
