Neanderthals, humans co-existed in Europe for over 2,000 years: study

PARIS: Neanderthals and humans lived alongside each other in France and northern Spain for up to 2,900 years, modelling research suggested on Thursday, giving them plenty of time to potentially learn from or even breed with each other.

While the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, did not provide evidence that humans directly interacted with Neanderthals around 42,000 years ago, previous genetic research has shown that they must have at some point.

Research by Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who won the medicine Nobel prize last week, helped reveal that people of European descent -- and almost everyone worldwide -- have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.

Igor Djakovic, a PhD student at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the new study, said we know that humans and Neanderthals “met and integrated in Europe, but we have no idea in which specific regions this actually happened”.

Exactly when this happened has also proved elusive, though previous fossil evidence has suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals walked the Earth at the same time for thousands of years.

To find out more, the Leiden-led team looked at radiocarbon dating for 56 artefacts -- 28 each for Neanderthals and humans -- from 17 sites across France and northern Spain. The artefacts included bones as well as distinctive stone knives thought to have been made by some of the last Neanderthals in the region.

The researchers then used Bayesian modelling to narrow down the potential date ranges. Then they used optimal linear estimation, a new modelling technique they adapted from biological conservation sciences, to get the best estimate for when the region´s last Neanderthals lived.