Europe by Tim Flannery

Author:Tim Flannery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2018-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

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* It is odd that Haeckel overlooked the very large Neanderthal brain, which was known from the original skull cap.

* Their large eyes may have been adaptations to the low light conditions of the European winter, or to life in caves.

CHAPTER 26

Bastards

The first anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. By then, successive waves of upright apes, including Homo erectus and the ancestors of the Neanderthals, had been making their way into Europe from Africa for nearly two million years. Our species was destined to follow in their footsteps. By about 180,000 years ago Homo sapiens had pushed as far north as present-day Israel, where they may have hybridised with Neanderthals.1 But for reasons that remain unclear, these first African expatriates did not reach Europe. It was not until about 60,000 years ago, when humans again emerged out of Africa, that our species spread.

A recent genetic study has established that the first human colonisers of Europe were a single population, derived in part from African migrants who arrived around 37,000 years ago, and who fell within the genetic variability of living Africans.2

Dating the chronology of hominid invasions and extinctions can lead to confusion. This is in part because the events were dated using different methods (for example, genetic comparisons and radiocarbon dates). Dates based on genetic comparisons rely on rates of genetic change, which are ‘anchored’ by reference to the fossil record, while radiocarbon dates rely on estimates of decay of C14. All dates are estimates, often with wide margins of error, and all methods of dating have their own biases, which can introduce errors. We should keep in mind that it is entirely possible that the date of Neanderthal extinction (radiocarbon dated to about 39,000 years ago) and the date for human arrival (derived from genetic analysis as 37,000 years ago) in fact occurred in the same millennium.

Among the oldest undisputed collection of human remains from Europe includes partial skeletons, skulls and jaws found in the Peştera cu Oase caves, near the Iron Gates on the Danube in Romania. The bones have been dated to between 37,000 and 42,000 years old, with a most likely age of 37,800 years.3 The caves lie on a migration route into western Europe known as the Danubian Corridor. First identified by the archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe, many species have doubtless followed the corridor over millions of years.

The bones found in Peştera cu Oase were first identified as those of modern humans, but then it was noticed that they have some Neanderthal-like features. Ancient DNA recovered from one skeleton revealed that it was a human–Neanderthal hybrid, in whom large chunks of Neanderthal DNA (including almost all of chromosome 12) was interspersed with modern human DNA. With each generation, the DNA is mixed into ever smaller segments. The fact that the Neanderthal DNA occurred in such large pieces in the Peştera cu Oase individual indicates that the hybridisation event had occurred just four to six generations back.4 So, we know

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