The earliest evidence for anatomically modern humans in northwestern Europe

Abstract

The earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe are thought to have appeared around 43,000-42,000 calendar years before present (43-42 kyr cal BP), by association with Aurignacian sites and lithic assemblages assumed to have been made by modern humans rather than by Neanderthals. However, the actual physical evidence for modern humans is extremely rare, and direct dates reach no farther back than about 41-39 kyr cal BP, leaving a gap. Here we show, using stratigraphic, chronological and archaeological data, that a fragment of human maxilla from the Kent's Cavern site, UK, dates to the earlier period. The maxilla (KC4), which was excavated in 1927, was initially diagnosed as Upper Palaeolithic modern human. In 1989, it was directly radiocarbon dated by accelerator mass spectrometry to 36.4-34.7 kyr cal BP. Using a Bayesian analysis of new ultrafiltered bone collagen dates in an ordered stratigraphic sequence at the site, we show that this date is a considerable underestimate. Instead, KC4 dates to 44.2-41.5 kyr cal BP. This makes it older than any other equivalently dated modern human specimen and directly contemporary with the latest European Neanderthals, thus making its taxonomic attribution crucial. We also show that in 13 dental traits KC4 possesses modern human rather than Neanderthal characteristics; three other traits show Neanderthal affinities and a further seven are ambiguous. KC4 therefore represents the oldest known anatomically modern human fossil in northwestern Europe, fills a key gap between the earliest dated Aurignacian remains and the earliest human skeletal remains, and demonstrates the wide and rapid dispersal of early modern humans across Europe more than 40 kyr ago.

Ramification of lithic production and the search of small tools in Iberian Peninsula Middle Paleolithic

“…60e40 ka BP. The Iberian Peninsula is considered one of the last refugia of Neandertal populations (Zilhão, 2006;Finlayson et al, 2008;Higham et al, 2011). Recently some of the late dates of Mousterian assemblages in this region have been discussed (Wood et al, 2013) but, roughly, it can be said that there is some persistence of Neandertal groups after ca.…”

Archaeology: Date with history

“…Higham and his colleagues have now begun to find older examples. In November 2011, they announced that they had dated what would become the oldest human fossil in Britain 5 . A fragment of jaw bone had been discovered in 1927 in Kent's Cavern, a coastal cave in Devon, and had been dated in the late 1980s to about 35,000 years old 6 .…”

“…"We're starting to build up a picture that modern humans were getting into Europe much earlier than we thought, " says Chris Stringer, a palaeo anthropologist at London's Natural History Museum and coauthor of the Kent's Cavern paper 5 .…”

“…Higham's team assert that the jaw is more than 41,000 years old 5 , on the basis of dates of animal bones excavated above and below the jaw. (The team was unable to date the jaw itself.)…”

Neanderthals: Bone technique redrafts prehistory

“…The technique has allowed the researchers to redraft the prehistory of Europe cave by cave, and show that early humans arrived in southwestern England 2 Humans, argues Higham's team, were in Italy as early as 45,000 years ago, where they developed a stone-tool culture known as the Uluzzian industry. The team estimates that humans and Neanderthals overlapped for up to 5,400 years in parts of southern Europe, yet to a much lesser extent or not at all in other parts of the continent.…”