The Disappearance of the Neandertals
The Mousterian cultural period came to an end around 35,000 years ago. After 200,000 or more years of a stable technology and way of life, the end was sudden--at least by evolutionary standards. Specialists have argued back and forth for decades: Was the abrupt disappearance of the Mousterians the result of an invasion of peoples from elsewhere, or was it a matter of in situ evolution?
Until recently, most archaeologists agreed that the Neandertals were responsible for the Mousterian, and that the succeeding cultures were the product of anatomically modern humans. However, this sequence is no longer certain. At the site of Saint-Césaire in SW France, remains of two Neandertals including the one shown here were excavated. Archaeologists were in for a big surprise. The skeletons were in a level containing Upper Paleolithic tools and dated to about 33,000 years ago.
These unexpected finds suggest that the swift transition to the Upper Paleolithic may not have been the simple result of intrusive populations. From other regions, such as Africa, the Near East and central and eastern Europe, it is becoming clear that the temporal boundary between archaic forms of Homo sapiens (such as Neandertals) and fully modern humans is not the same everywhere. Considerable evidence is emerging from Africa and even Australia for anatomically modern humans prior to those of Europe.
