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Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France

  • Ludovic Slimak
  • , Clément Zanolli
  • , Tom Higham
  • , Marine Frouin
  • , Jean Luc Schwenninger
  • , Lee J. Arnold
  • , Martina Demuro
  • , Katerina Douka
  • , Norbert Mercier
  • , Gilles Guérin
  • , Hélène Valladas
  • , Pascale Yvorra
  • , Yves Giraud
  • , Andaine Seguin-Orlando
  • , Ludovic Orlando
  • , Jason E. Lewis
  • , Xavier Muth
  • , Hubert Camus
  • , Ségolène Vandevelde
  • , Mike Buckley
  • Carolina Mallol, Chris Stringer, Laure Metz
  • Université Toulouse - Le Mirail
  • Université de Bordeaux
  • University of Oxford
  • University of Vienna
  • Adelaide University
  • Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
  • Université Bordeaux Montaigne
  • Université Paris-Saclay
  • LAMPEA
  • Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier
  • Stony Brook University
  • Get in Situ
  • PROTEE-EXPERT
  • Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
  • University of Manchester
  • University of La Laguna
  • The Natural History Museum, London
  • University of Connecticut

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

169 Scopus citations

Abstract

Determining the extent of overlap between modern humans and other hominins in Eurasia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, is fundamental to understanding the nature of their interactions and what led to the disappearance of archaic hominins. Apart from a possible sporadic pulse recorded in Greece during the Middle Pleistocene, the first settlements of modern humans in Europe have been constrained to ∼45,000 to 43,000 years ago. Here, we report hominin fossils from Grotte Mandrin in France that reveal the earliest known presence of modern humans in Europe between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago. This early modern human incursion in the Rhône Valley is associated with technologies unknown in any industry of that age outside Africa or the Levant. Mandrin documents the first alternating occupation of Neanderthals and modern humans, with a modern human fossil and associated Neronian lithic industry found stratigraphically between layers containing Neanderthal remains associated with Mousterian industries.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberabj9496
JournalScience Advances
Volume8
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2022

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