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- WASHINGTON - Neanderthals
and modern humans may have coexisted in central Europe for thousands of
years, possibly even mating, suggests new radiocarbon dating of bones from
a cave in Croatia.
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- Bones found in the Vindija cave site in Croatia have
yielded the youngest dates ever, 28,000 to 29,000 years, for Neanderthal
remains, said Fred H. Smith, an anthropologist at Northern Illinois University.
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- Smith said it was the strongest evidence yet that the
primitive Neanderthal lived at the same time and at the same place as did
modern human beings.
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- A report on the Neanderthal specimens will be published
today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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- Neanderthals, a primitive hominid with prominent brow,
coarse jaw, short lower limbs and a prominence at the back of the skull,
are thought to have arisen in Africa more than 250,000 years ago. They
are thought to have appeared in Europe about 100,000 years ago and were
eventually replaced by modern humans.
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- Specimens for modern humans dated at 90,000 to 100,000
years have been found in Africa and in the Middle East. Modern human bones
found in central Europe have been dated at about 32,000 years.
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- The new Neanderthal age dates are based on material removed
from a jawbone and a skull bone found in the Croatian cave. The specimens
had earlier been dated at 45,000 years using a gamma ray counter. The new
dates of 28,000 to 29,000 were determined using a more accurate method
called accelerator radiocarbon dating, which measures the level in the
specimen of a carbon isotope.
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- The new dates for the Neanderthal, said Smith, mean "there
was an overlap of 3,000 to 4,000 years" with modern humans in central
Europe.
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- Smith said the find strengthens the theory that Neanderthals
and modern humans did mate and produce hybrid children that had genes from
both species.
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- He said he and others believe that there are body features
in bones from 30,000-year-old human specimens that suggest a Neanderthal
contribution to the European gene pool.
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- Erik Trinkaus of Washington University at St. Louis,
a co-author of the study, said that the remains of a human child found
in Portugal included features in the legs, arms, teeth and skull that resemble
those of the Neanderthal.
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- "The Portuguese specimen shows that an admixture
did occur in Portugal and could very well have occurred elsewhere,"
said Trinkaus.
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- The mixing of modern humans and Neanderthals is a controversial
issue among anthropologists, and Clark Howell of the University of California,
Berkeley, said not many agree with Smith and Trinkaus.
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- Howell said the new dates found by Smith and Trinkaus
"are not surprising" and do prove that Neanderthals and modern
humans may have lived in Central Europe at about the same time.
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- But he said there is no widely accepted evidence that
the primitive hominids and modern humans actually mated and produced children.
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- "You could argue that they lived apart in the same
area and threw rocks at each other instead of genes," said Howell.
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- He said he believes the characteristics in the modern
human skeletons that Trinkaus and Smith attribute to Neanderthal are actually
within the range of normal variations for humans.
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- Smith said the issue may eventually be settled by genetic
testing. Some DNA has been recovered from ancient bones, he said, and researchers
in Sweden are attempting to compare gene fragments from Neanderthals to
that of modern humans.
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