Science still doesn’t know why Neanderthals disappeared: if they were violently eliminated by Sapiens; if deprived by them of their sources of natural resources; if contaminated by diseases that they may have brought from distant lands. Perhaps the three factors combined. Or, who knows, the cause could have been entirely different.
In any case, two things are certain. First, the disappearance of Homo neanderthalensis “coincided” with the arrival of Homo sapiens the Europe. Originally from Africa, it lived for many generations in the Middle East, before reaching the European continent. Second, there was sexual contact between the two populations. The proof of this is that modern-day humans, descendants of Sapiens, carry a small percentage of Neanderthal genes in their genome.
This percentage, from 2% to 4%, occurs uniformly in all current human populations. However, a significantly higher rate, of 6%, was detected in the DNA of two Sapiens skulls, dating from 35,000 to 40,000 years old, found in Romania. Typically Neanderthal artifacts have already been discovered in the region. But the remains remain to be found, which, it seems, must exist, both due to the strategic position that the Balkans occupy in the passage from the Middle East to Europe, and due to the greater stock of Neanderthal genes in the Sapiens skulls unearthed there.
In search of these evidentiary traces, the veteran researcher Walter Neves traveled to Romania with the aim of prospecting archaeological and paleontological sites suitable for discovery. “The first step is to determine the most likely places. The next step will be to excavate sites that are more than 40 thousand years old, in the hope of finding Neanderthal bones”, says Neves.
The study, which will be carried out by a Romanian-Brazilian scientific mission, receives support from Fapesp through the project “The interaction between Neanderthals and modern humans in the northern Balkans: a paleoanthropological approach”.
“Three Sapiens skulls found in Romania show signs that are typical of Neanderthals, suggesting that some form of hybridization between the two species may have occurred there. More recently, DNA taken from two of these three skulls actually showed 6% Neanderthal genes, a rate considered high. It was clear that this was a region in which the two species exchanged genes”, informs the researcher.
Previous discoveries, made in the Carpathian Mountains, in Romania, showed that they constituted one of the routes that the first Sapiens used to enter the European continent. Neves’ objective is to find the exact places where the encounter with the Neanderthals took place and what happened after that.
“We will prospect sites in the Vârghi river gorge, north of the Perani Mountains, in the Eastern Carpathians. This was, with great probability, a meeting place. Excavations in caves in the region, in the period corresponding to the Middle Paleolithic, can provide crucial information about how the two human species interacted and dealt with the climate changes that occurred in the area”, he states.
To this end, researchers will carry out archaeological prospecting using computerized documentation and management methodologies developed by the team itself. They will apply various dating methods, including radiocarbon, uranium/thorium ratio and optically stimulated luminescence, to establish the chronology of anthropogenic deposits. They will carry out micromorphology and sedimentology analyzes to determine the formation processes of archaeological sites. And, finally, they will analyze the fossil remains morphologically and taxonomically and carry out a battery of molecular analyzes to determine diet, mobility and population history.
Common ancestor
Sapiens and Neanderthals descend from a common ancestor, the Homo heidelbergensiswhich would have evolved from African lineages of Homo erectus some 600 thousand years ago. The migrations of Homo heidelbergensis for different habitats determined the differentiation of the two daughter species.
Sapiens appeared in Africa around 230 thousand years ago; they remained there for a long time; later, they migrated to the Middle East and, later, to Europe. Neanderthals formed in Europe and inhabited the European continent between 250-200 thousand and 40 thousand years ago. Its disappearance, approximately 40 thousand years ago, coincided with the arrival of the Sapiens.
“Neanderthals had an elongated neurocranium, a flat forehead and a face that was very forward. Its brain, measuring around 1,550 cubic centimeters, was larger than ours, which has an average size of 1,350 cubic centimeters. But his prefrontal cortex was less developed, hence the flat forehead”, describes Neves. The researcher believes that excavations in Romania will be able to clarify how these primitive inhabitants of Europe lived; how they related to the Sapiens, coming from the Middle East; and whether it was this interaction that determined his disappearance.
Neves also emphasizes the geopolitical importance, so to speak, of the mission. “From the point of view of paleoanthropology, Brazil is nothing. The only center that studies human macroevolution is ours, at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo (IEA-USP). Generally, what happens is that researchers from First World countries look for our ancestors at sites in Third World countries. This gives them something very important in my area, which we jokingly call ‘fossil power‘ [poder fóssil]. Now, we are reversing the meaning: we are researchers from the Third World going to study human macroevolution in the First World. This is important for Brazil, because human evolution studies have very high visibility,” he says.
This will be the second paleoanthropological mission carried out by Brazilian researchers abroad. The first, led by Neves himself, took place in Jordan, and was financed mostly by Fapesp. “In Jordan, we work with our 2.5 million year old ancestors. Now, let’s work in an interval between 60 thousand and 40 thousand years. And our dream for the future is to establish a Brazilian mission in Africa”, summarizes the researcher.
In Jordan, Neves and collaborators found the oldest lithic artifacts outside Africa. “This allowed us to push back the first departure of hominids from Africa by around 700,000 years – which is completely changing the picture of the dispersal of the first representatives of the genus Homo“, account. The researcher’s expectation is that the mission in Romania can be as fruitful as this.
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