Monday, May 08, 2006

Blog entry makes news Neanderthals and Humans: Perhaps They Never Met

The number of years that modern humans are thought to have overlapped with Neanderthals in Europe is shrinking fast, and some scientists now say that figure could drop to zero.

Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia from 230,000 to 29,000 years ago, petering out soon after the arrival of modern humans from Africa.

There is much debate on exactly how Neanderthals went extinct. Theories include climate change and inferior tools compared to those made by modern humans. Anthropologists also disagree on whether modern humans and Neanderthals are the same species and interbred.


Actually, the bigger part of the article is on some other work by Paul Mellars, but it refers to Hawks' blog where he comments on it (note to LiveScience: Make a link to the exact post!).