New Dates Suggested for Spain’s Last Neanderthals

News January 24, 2019

(University of Seville)
SHARE:
Spain last Neanderthals
(University of Seville)

SEVILLE, SPAIN—According to a New Scientist report, Francisco Jiménez-Espejo of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and his colleagues reanalyzed stone tools discovered in southern Spain’s Bajondilla Cave, and claim there is a clear transition between the tools made by Neanderthals and those made by modern humans. New radiocarbon dates from the cave indicate that the change occurred about 43,000 years ago, or at about the same time Neanderthals died out in the rest of Europe. It had been previously suggested that Neanderthals survived in southern Spain for 8,000 to 10,000 years after they disappeared from the rest of the continent because evidence for the arrival of modern humans on the Iberian Peninsula before about 35,000 years ago had been lacking. For more on Neanderthals in Spain, go to “Neanderthal Medicine Chest.”

  • Features November/December 2018

    Reimagining the Crusades

    A detailed picture of more than two centuries of European Christian life in the Holy Land is emerging from new excavations at monasteries, towns, cemeteries, and some of the world’s most enduring castles

    Read Article
    (Peter Horree/Alamy Stock Photo)
  • Letter from California November/December 2018

    Inside a Native Stronghold

    A rugged volcanic landscape was once the site of a dramatic standoff between the Modoc tribe and the U.S. Army

    Read Article
    (Julian Smith)
  • Artifacts November/December 2018

    Russian Canteen

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Copyright David Kobialka/Antiquity)
  • Digs & Discoveries November/December 2018

    The American Canine Family Tree

    Read Article
    (Photo by Del Baston/Courtesy of the Center for American Archeology)