Modern man reached northwest Europe more than 45,000 years ago

Laymen tend to believe that modern humans – Homo sapiens– evolved from more-primitive Neanderthals and that few coexisted. Neanderthals are our closest ancient human relatives. The physical traits of Homo sapiens include a high and rounded skull and a relatively narrow pelvis – and that measuring these can reliably separate a modern human from a Neanderthal. 

It is known that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens inhabited the same geographic areas in western Asia for 30,000 to 50,000 years; genetic evidence shows that while they interbred with non-African modern humans, they ultimately became distinct branches of the human family tree.

Scientists have in recent years discovered that Neanderthal genes comprise some one to four percent of the genome of present-day humans whose ancestors migrated out of Africa, but the question remained open on how much those genes are still actively influencing human traits.

Now, European researchers have found that Homo sapiens reached northwest Europe as early as 47,500 years ago and coexisted there with Neanderthals.

“The Ranis cave site in Thüringen, Germany provides evidence for the first dispersal of Homo sapiens ITALICS across the higher latitudes of Europe. It turns out that stone artefacts that were thought to be produced by Neanderthals were in fact part of the early Homo sapiens tool kit. This fundamentally changes our previous knowledge about this time period,” wrote the team in a just-released study in the prestigious journal Nature until the title “Homo sapiens reached the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago.”

Modern humans reached Europe long before Neanderthals disappeared

“Modern man reached northwestern Europe long before Neanderthal disappearance in southwestern Europe.”  said Prof. Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Collège de France in Paris and emeritus director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany

He led the international research team that re-excavated Ranis between 2016 and 2022 to locate remaining deposits from the 1930s excavation and clarify the geology and chronology of the site. At the bottom of the eight-meter-deep sequence, the researchers discovered layers to find a 1.7 meter-thick rock in Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) layers. It is widely thought that the LRJ was produced by late Neanderthals and that its industrial roots were in late Middle Paleolithic The archaeologists in the 1930s had not been able to reach this far down. 

“We were fortunate. After removing that rock by hand, we finally uncovered deeper layers and even found human fossils. This came as a huge surprise, as no human fossils were known from the site before, and was a reward for the hard work at the site,” said Marcel Weiss of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Max Planck Institute. 

The first human bones from Ranis were identified together with animal remains in the lower layers. The team used palaeoproteomics, a relatively new tool to study previously unidentifiable skeletal remains recovered from archaeological sites that range from mineralized tissues such as bone and teeth to soft tissues that include hair and skin. “At Ranis, this enabled us to identify the first human remains associated with the LRJ layers, which were then analyzed further with the latest methods in ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating, and stable isotope analysis,” they wrote. 

 “This painstaking work was rewarded by the discovery of several new human bones,” said Hélène Rougier, a palaeoanthropologist at California State University. “Finding human remains mixed with animal bones that had been stored for almost a century was an unexpected and fantastic surprise,” she added. 

Once the 13 human skeletal remains from both the old and new excavations were identified, DNA was extracted from these fossils and analyzed. “We confirmed that the skeletal fragments belonged to Homo sapiens. 

Climatic conditions at the cave were cold. “This shows that even these earlier groups of Homo sapiens dispersing across Eurasia already had some capacity to adapt to such harsh climatic conditions,” says Sarah Pederzani from the University of La Laguna and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who led the palaeoclimate study of the site. “Until recently it was thought that resilience to cold-climate conditions did not appear until several thousand years later, so this is a fascinating and surprising result. Perhaps cold steppes with larger herds of prey animals were more attractive environments for these human groups than previously appreciated.”

The authors said their “milestone study on the initial incursions of Homo sapiens into Europe marks a significant milestone in understanding the initial incursions of Homo sapiens into Europe north of the Alps during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. Moving in small groups, they shared their environment and sites with large carnivores, like hyenas, and they manufactured elaborately crafted leaf-shaped stone tools. The results from the Ranis fundamentally change our ideas about the chronology and settlement history of Europe north of the Alps. It is especially exciting that we now have the oldest Homo sapiens here in Thüringen.”