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Extinction of the Neanderthal

Neanderthals not brought down by Chill

By Joshua S. Hill

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The extinction of the Neanderthal has long been a science mystery, reserved for the backroom debates of science conventions and classroom punch ups. Was it modern man wiping them out, was it a sudden climactic change, was it a bad burger? The lists of reasons go on. Thankfully, an international study led by the University of Leeds has managed to cross at least one explanation off the list of possibles.

Ever since the first identified bones of a Neanderthal were found back in the early 19th century, more than 400 have been found. Named after the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, where they were first identified as such, it has come to be believed that they inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia for more than 100,000 years.

Published in the September 13th edition of Nature, the research led by Professor Chronis Tzedakis, a palaeoecologist at the University of Leeds, has ruled out catastrophic climate change as the most plausible end of the Neanderthals.

"Until now," said Tzedakis, "there have been three limitations to understanding the role of climate in the Neanderthal extinction: uncertainty over the exact timing of their disappearance; uncertainties in converting radiocarbon dates to actual calendar years; and the chronological imprecision of the ancient climate record."

The team used a new method to circumvent the latter two problems, by mapping radiocarbon dates of interest directly onto a well-dated palaeoclimate archive, and subsequently providing a much clearer picture of the climate at the time of the Neanderthal disappearance.

This new method was applied to three sets of dates believed to time with the Neanderthal extinction, to evidence found in Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, a site believed to be where the last Neanderthal's occupied before their untimely end. The three dates were;

around 30-32,000 radiocarbon years ago

around 28,000 radiocarbon years ago

around 24,000 radiocarbon years ago

The first two dates were found to coincide with general climactic instability that Neanderthals had already proven they could endure, whereas the last date, while somewhat more contentious, still belied a condition in Gorham's Cave that would be endurable to them.

"...at that time, Gibraltar's climate remained relatively unaffected, perhaps as a result of warm water from the subtropical Atlantic entering the western Mediterranean," explained palaeoceanographer Isabel Cacho of the University of Barcelona.

"Our findings suggest that there was no single climatic event that caused the extinction of the Neanderthals," concludes palaeonthropologist Katerina Harvati of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "Only the controversial date of 24,000 radiocarbon years for their disappearance, if proven correct, coincides with a major environmental shift. Even in this case, however, the role of climate would have been indirect, by promoting competition with other human groups."

The work conducted by the Leeds team has further implications as well for other studies, as the technology used to prove the above information can also be used on other fossils, to determine the role of climate in critical events of the past.

Other articles by Joshua Hill

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