New dating evidence of the early presence of hominins in Southern Europe

Abstract

The first “Out of Africa” migrations represent a seminal event in the history of humankind. At the gates of Europe, the first appearance of Hominins is recorded in Georgia, 1.8 million years ago (Ma); however, the picture of migration across the continent remains incomplete. Vallonnet Cave (France) is a Lower Paleolithic prehistoric site with traces of hominin activities including lithic remains and cut-marks on mammal bones. Here, we apply the uranium-lead (U-Pb) methods to two flowstones to date the intervening archaeological levels. The U-Pb data, coupled with paleomagnetic constraints, provide an age range from 1.2 to 1.1 Ma. The results conclusively demonstrate that Vallonnet Cave is one of the oldest European prehistoric sites in France with early hominin occupations associated with an Epivillafranchian fauna. Combined with data from other archaeological sites, the new precise chronology suggests a widespread occupation the Northern Mediterranean to Southwestern Europe at ~1.2 Ma.

The last refugia of the ‘Young Europe’ defenders: Untermassfeld (Thuringia, Germany)

“…deny the occurrence of clear discernible intentional modified lithics and bones and do not respect recent scientific results. 10,52 Moreover, it disqualifies future investigations ex cathedra by arrogant and cynical accusations. Regarding the Vallonnet criticism, it is not very convincing to refer to an investigation of which the proof of argumentation is based on the depiction of one pebble with a single removal 53 and arouses suspicion that the authors have never seen the artifacts.…”

Uneven Data Quality and the Earliest Occupation of Europe—the Case of Untermassfeld (Germany)

“…The authors conclude that the stone tools and the humanly modified faunal remains from Untermassfeld provide evidence for the earliest hominin presence in European continental mid-latitudes at about 50°north. Together with the evidence from inferred contemporaneous sites such as Vallparadis (Spain) (Martínez et al 2010) and Le Vallonet (France) (de Lumley 1988;Michel et al 2017), they see this as additional evidence that humans were wellestablished in Europe already 1 million years ago. If these claims are substantiated, the Untermassfeld site, a striking outlier in the geographical distribution of early Palaeolithic sites (Rolland 2013;Wiśniewski et al 2014) thus far and at odds with the spatio-temporal pattern described above, would indeed be a very interesting occurrence.…”

“…More importantly, the artificial character of the small and primitive (but well-published) lithic assemblage ) from the site is not unambiguous (Roebroeks and van Kolfschoten 1994). The lithics from Le Vallonet (see Michel et al 2017, Fig. 3 for a clear colour picture of some Blithic artefacts^from the site) were already addressed in the Short Chronology and have also been critically reviewed in another, independent, publication (White 1995):…”

“…The fact that the explicit questions raised by these publications have never been addressed in papers by the excavators of Le Vallonet, besides a very brief mentioning of their existence in a recent paper (Michel et al 2017), illustrates that there is still ground to gain for an open scientific debate on the earliest occupation of Europe.…”

“…The French cave site of Le Vallonnet ) is still a very prominent one in studies of early Europe, routinely treated as an archaeological site from the Jaramillo subchron, even though the palaeomagnetic dating evidence is debated (Muttoni et al 2013;Parés et al 2013). A recent dating study of the infill suggests that the site pre-dates the Jaramillo and gives an age in the 1.1-1.2-Ma range (Michel et al 2017). More importantly, the artificial character of the small and primitive (but well-published) lithic assemblage ) from the site is not unambiguous (Roebroeks and van Kolfschoten 1994).…”