Who killed the Neanderthals?

You might say it’s the coldest cold case in the history of cold cases. And now, scientists have another lead in this prehistoric who-done-it.

It appears Neanderthals died out earlier than thought – roughly around the same time they came into contact with modern humans.

That means a big, hairy, prehistoric finger could be pointing squarely at our ancestors.

The earlier date of extinction comes from research out of the University College Cork in Ireland. Scientists evaluated a Neanderthal fossil discovered in a Russian cave in the northern Caucasus, and determined it is about 10,000 years older than thought, casting doubt on the theory that Neanderthals and early humans coexisted.

“It now seems much clearer that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans did not co-exist in the Caucasus, and it is possible that this scenario is also true for most regions of Europe,” said Ron Pinhasi of the University College Cork.

So, what happened to the Neanderthals? Were early humans responsible for their demise, directly or indirectly?

Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University, told The New York Times the re-dating fits with the theory that early humans were intellectually and technologically superior to Neanderthals and likely contributed to their extinction. “This (superiority) would have allowed them to spread very rapidly and to precipitate the extinction of the Neanderthals almost immediately on contact,” he said.

Researchers involved in the re-dating don’t make such a strong statement, but they draw conclusions in a more roundabout way.

“This latest dating evidence sheds further light on the extinction dates for Neanderthals in this key region, which is seen by many as a crossroads for the movement of modern humans into the wider Russian plains,” said Tom Higham, with the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. “The extinction of Neanderthals here is, therefore, an indicator we think, of when that first probably happened.”

In other words, the plot thickens.

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