Ilium

• The idea that two different human species, Homo sapiens (us) and Neanderthals, co-existed in western Eurasia 50–40,000 years ago has long captured the imagination of academics and the public alike.
• It is therefore not surprising that this time period – the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition – has been a focus of research for many archaeologists, physical anthropologists and, more recently, geneticists.
• Human skeletal remains are comparatively rare, with many of the best-known fossils having been excavated under less than ideal conditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Major revisions

• This means the smallest amounts of more recent contamination from the burial environment, or from museum conservation materials, can make dating finds from these sites extremely challenging.
• This has resulted in major revisions to the chronology of early human occupation over the past decade, shifting some dates on Neanderthal and modern human remains by many thousands of years.
• This is obviously crucial to the debate, since it is impossible to speak of overlap or replacement without a robust chronology.

• These teeth came from the same sediment levels as the human remains.
• The results place the people in a particularly cold snap around 45–43,000 years ago.
• The H. sapiens remains are associated with what was previously considered an ambiguous stone tool industry (a particular way of making tools) called the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ).

Mystery toolmakers

• Most notable is the Châtelperronian of southern France and northern Spain: do the Neanderthal remains accompanying some of these “modern-looking” tool industries mean they were the toolmakers, or is the association fortuitous?
• Most caves with Palaeolithic deposits saw intermittent occupation, often by both Neanderthals and H. sapiens, over millennia.
• The dates for the levels under consideration still span several millennia, during which there may well have been short-term visits by both camps.

New archaeological techniques

• The results from Ranis, as well as contributing important new data to our understanding of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition, highlight the contributions of recent developments in archaeological science.
• This technique was also applied to the site’s fauna in another companion paper.
• Then, relatively high-precision radiocarbon dates were obtained for both the sediment level and the human remains themselves.
• But most importantly for the question at hand, ancient DNA analysis – in this case, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) – confirmed the identification as H. sapiens.

Rick Schulting does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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