British Archaeological Reports International Series
Number:
Volume:
1005
Year:
2001
Pages:
13-19
Keywords:
ISBN:
ISSN:
URL:
Abstract:
The anatomical mosaic comprising both Neandertal and early modern human features identified in the 25,000 year old skeleton of the Lagar Velho child suggests that extensive hybridization between the two groups occurred when moderns entered Iberian regions south of the Ebro basin some 28-30,000 years ago. The archaeological data available for this transitional period, however, show an abrupt cultural replacement of the local late Middle Paleolithic repertoires by the Aurignacian. It is increasingly clear that similar processes of late Neandertal survival may have occurred elsewhere in Europe. The pre-Aurignacian invention of ornaments and bone tools by Châtelperronian Neandertals indicates that, throughout most of Europe, Neandertal/modern contacts were encounters between fully Upper Paleolithic cultures on both sides. On a continental scale, Neandertal extinction must have been a complex, uneven and extremely varied biocultural process, not the simple, straightforward replacement of an inferior brand of humans by a superior one. The available evidence also suggests that contemporaneity between the two groups at a local or regional level must have been very short-lived and that the resulting interaction must have had more lasting or more visible consequences at the biological than at the cultural level.
