The genetic analysis of the bone fragments found in the archaeological place in Central Germany shows that modern people – Homo sapiens – reached Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, inhabiting the territory together with Neanderthals for several thousand years before their disappearance.
The study confirms that the place near Ranis in Germany, known for its carefully spent stone tools in the form of leaves, is one of the oldest confirmed places for the presence of the culture of modern man in the northern central and north-west Europe.
Evidence of the parallel stay of Homo sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis is confirmed by genetic data indicating their interspecific crossing. These findings also strengthen the hypothesis that the spread of modern man in Europe and Asia about 50,000 years ago could contribute to the disappearance of Neanderthals who inhabited these lands for more than half a million years.
Genetic analysis, as well as archaeological, isotopic analysis and radiocarbon dating of a place in Ranis are described in three articles published in Nature and Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Stone tools in Ranis, called leaf-shaped points, are similar to tools found in several places in Moravia, Poland, Germany, and the UK. It is believed that they are produced by the same culture, known as Linkombsk-Ranisi-Remanovichsky tier (lrj).
“Recently discovered artifacts indicate that the discovered technologies were developed by Homo sapiens, which penetrated the northern territories already 45,000 years ago,” said Elena, the co-author of the study published in the journal Nature and researcher from the University of California in Berkeley.
The blockage began work on the project in 2018, being a graduate student at the Max-Plankovsky Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The project was headed by Jean-Jacques Yublin, former director of the institute and professor of college