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A cave in the northern Caucasus Mountains may hold a key to the long-standing mystery of why the Neandertals, our closest relatives, went extinct. For nearly 300,000 years the heavy-browed, barrel-chested Neandertals presided over Eurasia, weathering glacial conditions more severe than any our own kind has ever faced. Then, starting around 40,000 years ago, their numbers began to decline. Shortly after 28,000 years ago, they were gone. Paleoanthropologists have been debating whether competition with incoming modern humans or the onset of rapidly oscillating climate was to blame for their demise. But new findings suggest that catastrophic volcanic eruptions may have doomed the Neandertals—and paved the way for modern humans to take their place.
Researchers led by Liubov Vitaliena Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in Saint Petersburg studied the deposits in Mezmaiskaya cave, located in southwestern Russia. First discovered by archaeologists in 1987, the cave once sheltered Neandertals and, later, modern humans. Analyzing the various stratigraphic layers, the scientists found layers of volcanic ash that, based on the geochemical composition of the ashes, they attribute to eruptions that occurred in the Caucasus region around 40,000 years ago. Because the cave preserves a long record of Neandertal occupation preceding the ash layers but no traces of them afterward, the team surmises that the eruptions devastated the locals.
Moreover, looking more broadly at sites across Eurasia, the investigators noted that the eruptions coincided with the disappearance of the Neandertals across most of their range, save for a few groups that took refuge in the south. In a paper published in Current Anthropology, they propose that the eruptions precipitated a so-called volcanic winter that may have resulted in mass deaths of Neandertals and their prey. The misfortune of the Neandertals, however, was a boon for modern humans, who lived in southern locales unaffected by the volcanic activity. Once the Neandertals were gone, so the theory goes, moderns could move north unchallenged.
The team’s interpretation of the data from the cave has elicited criticism from some researchers, such as Francesco G. Fedele of the University of Naples in Italy, who complained in commentaries published alongside the paper that the age of the ashes is not firm enough to draw such conclusions. But others, including Paul B. Pettitt of the University of Sheffield in England, called the new extinction and replacement scenario plausible. The riddle of the Neandertals’ downfall is far from solved, but the volcanic eruption theory may turn up the heat on the competition.
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12 Comments
Add CommentHoping to access the unnamed research paper used as the basis for this writeup, I clicked on the link labeled Current 'Anthropology' and was redirected to: Scientific American's Anthropology section and back to this article. Thanks a lot for the useless info...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article just doesn't make much sense. I can understand you saying that a volcano could wipe the Neandertals out in the North, but the volcano did not affect the Neandertals in the South and it wouldn't affect the Neandertals who was in a different location in the North far away from the volcano. I think the Neandertals would be all over the place after living here for 300,000 years. Wouldn't the Neandertals in the South continue to proliferate at their normal rate and the humans who is claimed to have came from Africa still have to deal with the Neandertals in the South before they could come further North and then deal with the Neandertals who was not near the volcano? I think your theory does not hold water or much logic and the volcano did not extinct the Neandertals or have anything to do with their disappearance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWasn't there a volcano 70,000 years ago that nearly wiped out our species?What effect did it have on the Neanderthals?Maybe more than one volcano was involved in their demise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's an excellent question I've also been wondering about. Thanks for asking, but I can't really answer. I can only guess that the result of the Toba eruption was sudden global cooling and drought, which the Neanderthals might have been better located and adapted to survive...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also wonder about the 'human hobbit' on the Indonesian island of flores, not far from the Island of Toba in the same chain. If the hobbit is a truly a separate species, how did it survive next door to the Toba eruption when most of humanity the world over died? Was it a human adaptation to the consequences of the Toba eruption?
Volcanic eruptions in the Caucasus could not possibly have wiped out the Neanderthals. First, they were concentrated in France, Germany and Croatia. The missing link here is Italy, especially northern Italy. They would have been more affected by volcanic eruptions from the Mt Vesuvius chain, which is believed to have had a near supervolcano eruption that could have devastated them in Italy. It is far more likely that their own internal evolution and crossbreeding produced the most progressive Neanderthals, such as the Saint Cesaire one with modern brow, teeth and jawbone on a Neanderthal body. No archaic types are certain after c 45,000 BC. The Early Moderns were not very modern; the Mladecs and the Oases were far from looking like us. They preceded the redated Cro-Magnons, who were more archaic than the Mladecs and Oases. Am working on a book about this very subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl Sundel
I though the Neaderthals went exrinct about 25000 years ago? Gave them a good 15000 years to get over the eruptions...
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHistorical perspective by Pierre-Francois PUECH and Bernard PUECH:
Today, no one is able to pick up the thread of events of the times, but caves are like scenes which elements can be sources of reconstructing past events.
Volcanic eruptions may have wiped out Neandertals from northern Caucasus Mountains since layers of volcanic ash have been found in a cave which once sheltered Neandertals. But the story is only a case event. Most of the Neandertals lived in the South of Europe and Middle East.
Cave bears tell more than the volcanic ashes because they lived in the same caves than most of Neandertals. The two species becoming extinct around 25,000 years ago. The events concerns Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Ursus spelaeus, two impressive creatures since cave bears weighted up to 1,500 pounds and neandertal had a bigger cranial capacity than modern man. The two began to experience hard times about 30,000 years ago when the last ice age began.
An as a disaster never comes alone, Anatomically Modern Humans, well settled in Europe since they arrived more than 10,000 years before, wanted the caves where the bears hibernated and neandertals could avail a milder winter.
Today, no one is able to pick up the thread of events of the times, but caves are like scenes which elements can be sources of reconstructing past events. But prehistoric man painted on the walls. At France's Chauvet cave, a bit older than 30,000 years BP, the Modern Human Cro- Magnon left a floor covered with bear skeletons and walls painted with lions and bears that holds bear paw prints. He also, and perhaps more significantly, established a cave bear skull on a stone slab perched place. So,did Cro-Magnon Man tried to say he was the winner in positioning the trophy in a deliberately central condition? http://independent.academia.edu/pfpuech/Papers/361729/Cave_Bear_Neandertal_and_Modern_Human
Recent redating of 4 Cro-Magnon adult skeletons and 1 child by the French established their time as c 25,700 BC. Re-examination earlier of their remains revealed archaisms not noted before, including some that could be interpreted as Neanderthaloid. The popular press has not caught up to current field work, and is about 25 years behind. Cro-Magnons could not possibly have had anything to do with Chauvet Cave, which preceded them by some 4,000 years, or 2x the length of Christianity. The Mladecs and the Oases have replaced the Cro-Magnons as more anatomically modern, i.e., more barbaric. The Cro-Magnons have been blown out of the water after much bloviating about their wonderful qualities (a fairy tale). The facts are: the Saint Cesaire Neanderthal appears to have been as advanced, or more advanced anatomically, than the 5 Cro-Magnons. It is dated c 34,000-32,000 BC. Cave bears at Chauvet prove nothing more than that, when Ice Age people wanted a good warm suit, they could easily kill a hibernating bear and skin it. The skulls were used as fuel, as the Ice Age had denuded most of the land of good wooded trees. Leftover bear skulls suggest that a catastrophe brought Chauvet I to an end. When that happened, as we know from primitives today, the cave society fled and would not return to a place where catastrophe struck.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl Sundel
Clarification: the Cro-Magnons were more barbaric than the Mladecs or Oases. Barbaric and more anatomically unmodern means Cro-Magnons are now rated as barbaric and more anatomically unmodern than the Mladecs and Oases, who preceded them by over 4,000 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl Sundel
to Al Sundel and others...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the case of Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), who displaced Neanderthals in Europe and western Asia between 45,000 and 24,000 BP, the Grimaldi site helps in the understanding of the “symbolic explosion” heralding the Upper Palaeolithic behaviour of humankind. Natural cavities at the base of this cliff, having the Mediterranean shore at Grimaldi (Ventimiglia, Italy) have provided rock-shelters for humans, dating back to 300,000 years ago. Here, groups developed techniques and material equipment that were culturally distinctive, giving us the opportunity to see mankind in the same way as a biologist has the ability to see life, and to note similarities and dissimilarities with the living. Burial practices during the time of anatomically-modern humans (AMH) at Balzi Rossi have provided a number of well-preserved human remains. This burial record, coinciding in archaeological, environmental, and chronological contexts, allows the study of past hunters of animals that roamed the area, at that time unflooded, in front of the cliffs.
The all story can be read at: http://independent.academia.edu/pfpuech/Papers/211997/CAN_WE_STILL_HEAR_THE_CRO-MAGNON_MAN
Various Neandertal sites indicates that cannibalism was practiced in Europe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this("Once Were Cannibals" Scientific American, August 2001)
Perhaps our closest relatives went extinct because they have been eaten by Homo Sapiens!
I have seen different scenarios for the disappearance of the Neandertals. Modern humans ate them, out competed them, etc. They could not adapt to climate change even though they lasted through several ice ages. Now it is volcanoes. IMHO a much more probable lies elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI call it the Desoto phenomena. When Hernando Desoto explored the southeastern United States he spread European microbes that the indigenous people had no resistance. The diseases that spread rapidly among native populations decimated them. Over the next one hundred years so many Cherokee would die that they were reduced from thirteen precolumbian clans to the seven clans that survive today. In the Amazon entire civilizations once exposed to European diseases disappeared. The remnants of their towns and cities only recently identified and linked to tales of El Dorado.
I believe African diseases introduced into Europe is as probable an explanation for the demise of Neadertals as any explanation that I have seen.