Scientists have found evidence that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals may have coexisted in the same region.
Near the town of Ranis in central Germany, researchers found fragments of Homo sapiens bones. This was reported by IFLScience.
Genetic analysis of bone fragments showed that modern humans – Homo sapiens – had already arrived in northern Europe 45,000 years ago, intersecting with Neanderthals several thousand years before the last extinction.
Evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side is consistent with genomic evidence that the two species occasionally interbred. A large amount of Neanderthal DNA is present in the genomes of Eurasian descendants, but the nature of these contacts remains unclear.
To study these questions, researchers led by Dr. Elena Zavala of the University of California, Berkeley, focused on a cave called Ilsenhole near Ranis. Previous research has placed the cave at least 40,000 years old, but the origins of the tools found there are unknown.
So the team of Dr. Zavala used advanced techniques to analyze bone proteins to confirm the human origin of the skeletal remains. They isolated mitochondrial DNA from 13 bones found at the site and showed that they came from a group of Homo sapiens with common maternal ancestors.
Despite the harsh conditions observed 45,000 years ago, when the temperature was much lower than today, the authors concluded that these people were highly mobile and well adapted to cold conditions – something that was once thought impossible until the turn of the century. human history
Although much remains unknown about the interaction between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, this discovery proves that coexistence between closely related species may have continued for thousands of years.
It was previously reported that archaeologists in Denmark discovered a 2000-year-old knife with ancient runes minted on it.
Source: korrespondent
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