Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France

Ludovic Slimak (1) , Clément Zanolli (2) , Tom Higham (3) , Marine Frouin (4) , Jean-Luc Schwenninger (5) , Lee James Arnold (6) , Martina Demuro (6) , Katerina Douka (7) , Norbert Mercier (8) , Gilles Guerin (9, 10) , Helene Valladas (9) , Pascale Yvorra (11) , Yves Giraud (11) , Andaine Seguin-Orlando (12) , Ludovic Orlando (12) , Jason E. Lewis (4) , Xavier Muth (13) , Hubert Camus (14) , Ségolène Vandevelde (15, 9, 16) , Mike Buckley (17) , Carolina Mallol (18, 19) , Christ Stringer (20) , Laure Metz (11, 21)

1 TRACES - Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés
2 PACEA - De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie
3 RBINS - Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
4 SBU - Stony Brook University [SUNY]
5 University of Oxford
6 University of Adelaide
7 Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, 07745, Germany
8 IRAMAT - Institut de Recherches sur les Archéomatériaux
9 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
10 GEOTRAC - Géochrononologie Traceurs Archéométrie
11 LAMPEA - Laboratoire méditerranéen de préhistoire Europe-Afrique
12 CAGT - Centre d'anthropologie et de génomique de Toulouse
13 Get In Situ
14 Cenote
15 UP1 UFR03 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UFR Histoire de l'art et archéologie
16 Archéologies environnementales
17 University of Manchester [Manchester]
18 ULL - Universidad de La Laguna [Tenerife - SP]
19 University of Algarve [Portugal]
20 NHM - The Natural History Museum [London]
21 UCONN - University of Connecticut

Determining the extent of overlap between modern humans and other hominins in Eurasia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, is fundamental to understanding the nature of their interactions and what led to the disappearance of archaic hominins. Apart from a possible sporadic pulse recorded in Greece during the Middle Pleistocene, the first settlements of modern humans in Europe have been constrained to ~45,000 to 43,000 years ago. Here, we report hominin fossils from Grotte Mandrin in France that reveal the earliest known presence of modern humans in Europe between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago. This early modern human incursion in the Rhône Valley is associated with technologies unknown in any industry of that age outside Africa or the Levant. Mandrin documents the first alternating occupation of Neanderthals and modern humans, with a modern human fossil and associated Neronian lithic industry found stratigraphically between layers containing Neanderthal remains associated with Mousterian industries.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Ludovic Slimak, Clément Zanolli, Tom Higham, Marine Frouin, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, et al.. Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France. Science Advances , 2022, 8 (6), ⟨10.1126/sciadv.abj9496⟩. ⟨hal-03604105⟩