MOSCOW, may 12 — RIA Novosti. In Bulgaria Bacho Kiro cave, the archaeologists found the most ancient on the European continent the remains of modern man. It turned out that Homo sapiens came to Europe, where the Neanderthals lived 45 thousand years ago.
a description of the discoveries and results of the radiocarbon determination of the age of discoveries published in Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution.
At the turn of the middle and upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens entered Europe for several thousand years completely replaced the Neanderthals who lived there before. However, the exact time of this event remains unclear, and the findings relating to the so-called initial upper Paleolithic, was practically absent.
In the 1970-ies in the cave of Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria were found Paleolithic fossils, probably related to the beginning of the upper Paleolithic, but later samples were lost. In 2015, re-started excavations which led to the discovery of the most ancient on the European continent remains of modern humans.
in fact, scientists have found many small chip of bone, which it was impossible to establish the species, and one molar tooth, which belonged, according to scientists, Homo sapiens. And here archaeologists came modern methods.
“Most of the Pleistocene bones are so fragmented that the eye is impossible to determine which species they represent — presented in press release Institute of evolutionary anthropology of max Planck in the words of one of the authors of the study, Walkera Frido (Frido Welker). — However, proteins have slightly different amino acid sequence from species to species. Thus, using mass spectrometry protein, we can quickly identify these bone samples.”
Using a combination of methods, radiocarbon Dating and sequencing of mitochondrial DNA, the researchers found the age of the remains from 45 to 43 820 650 years. This is the earliest upper Paleolithic hominini, discovered to date in Europe.
In addition to human remains during excavations, archaeologists found a large number of stone tools and bone artifacts from 23 different species of animals, including shaped products, such as pendants made from the teeth of cave bears, reminiscent of decoration found in later Neanderthal sites in the South of France. Hence the researchers concluded that Neanderthals took over came Homo sapiens habits and technology.
“Whatever the cognitive level of the late Neanderthals, the material of the Bacho Kiro cave supports the notion that specific changes in behavior observed in the shorteningcontains populations of Neanderthals were the result of contact with Homo sapiens,” write the authors.
“the Findings of the initial upper Paleolithic in the cave Bacho-Kiro — the earliest known in Europe. It represents a new way of making stone tools and personal ornaments, different from what we know of Neanderthals up to this time, says another author of the study, Tsenka Tsanova (Tsenka Tsanova) of the Department of human evolution, Institute of evolutionary anthropology max Planck. — Modern man, which probably originates in the South West Asia in the upper Paleolithic quickly spread from Bulgaria to Mongolia, was influenced by the archaic populations of the Neanderthals and the denisovans, and eventually replaced them.”
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