last neanderthals
Last Neanderthals Ongoing Fieldwork
This interactive map displays the approximate locations of field activities carried out as part of the Last Neanderthals project. These include archaeological excavations, re-sampling campaigns, material collections, surveys, and coring operations conducted across key regions.
About
Today’s era is characterised by “the great loneliness of Homo sapiens”. For the past 40,000 years, we have been the only human species on Earth, but it has not always been so. For over 300,000 years, H. sapiens have shared the planet with Neanderthals, our closest relatives, and other species that are only now emerging from oblivion, like Denisovans, H. luzonensis and H. floresiensis.
Why did we – H. sapiens – after a long period of cohabitation and hybridisation with Neanderthals and Denisovans, become the lone hominin inhabitants of Earth? How is it possible, as it has now been ascertained, that Neanderthals were gone from Eurasia by 40,000 years ago (ka)? What happened to them? These questions have been addressed by generations of scholars, but they remain only partially answered.
LAST NEANDERTHALS is an interdisciplinary synergistic project set to shed more definitive light on the causes that led to the disappearance of the Neanderthals about 40ka, and provide the key to explain the demise of the other Middle/Late Pleistocene hominin species and the apparent evolutionary success of H. sapiens.
For the first time, research teams will work in close synergy across these key regions, with the objective of constructing the most comprehensive and accurate model to date of Neanderthal population dynamics and extinction processes.
Grounded on the extensive and complementary expertise, scientific achievements, and collaboration networks of the three PIs, the broad objective of project LAST NEANDERTHALS is to conclusively reconstruct the concurrent causes and events that led to the demise of the Neanderthals 60-40ka by achieving the following interrelated primary objectives:
- track the last evidence of Neanderthals and the early traces of Sapiens in key areas of eastern/southeastern Europe and western/central Asia to unravel the origins of their cultural diversity and assess potential socio-cultural interactions and/or competition between the two human groups;
- reconstruct Neanderthals’ and Sapiens’ population dynamics (e.g., paleodemography) by using a multi-proxy approach (e.g., accurate radiometric chronology, computer-based reconstruction methods, ancient DNA analysis);
- reconstruct the sub-centennial climatic and environmental conditions and assess the likelihood of catastrophic environmental events (i.e., Laschamp earth magnetic field excursion, volcanic winter) being linked to Neanderthals’ disappearance;
- integrate biological, cultural, and palaeoecological data to quantitatively model the demise of Neanderthals and the successful biocultural adaptation of Sapiens.
Our view of the Neanderthal world is heavily biased by the history and the geography of their research, which originated in 1856 with the discovery of Neanderthal remains at Feldhofer in Germany. Since then, western and central Europe have been the most explored regions in the world when it comes to Neanderthals and the Middle Paleolithic. A very strong narrative of the Neanderthal being a European species has been created, even going so far as to speak of a “Neanderthal stronghold” that was “conquered” by African Sapiens. We now know that this narrative does not accurately reflect the world of the last Neanderthals, which extended from the Iberian Peninsula to southern Siberia and witnessed complex bio-cultural exchanges with Sapiens and Denisovans. For their geographic location, western and central Asia and eastern and southeastern Europe were core Neanderthal interaction regions and gateways to the peripheral areas of their world (e.g., western Europe and Altai Mountains). Despite the importance of western/central Asia and eastern/southeastern Europe, these core regions remain largely under-investigated and contain undisclosed fundamental environmental and bio-cultural data that are key to reconstruct the disappearance of the Neanderthals.