Late surviving Neanderthals ’much older’ than previously thought

Late surviving Neanderthals 'much older' than previously thought Image credit: Dr Thibaut Devièse Late surviving Neanderthals from Croatia were much older than previously thought, according to new research from the University of Oxford. Previous research suggested that the 'Vindija Neanderthals' living in Vindija Cave in northern Croatia lived as recently as 32,000 years ago. This would have made them amongst the last known surviving Neanderthals and implied that Neanderthals and modern humans lived in central Europe at the same time. They were therefore known as a 'refugial' group. But a new radiocarbon dating method using single amino acids, developed by scientists at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, has found that these human remains were actually more than 8,000 years older than this initial estimate. This dates them to just before the arrival of modern humans in Europe. 'The Vindija Neanderthals have, for decades, been considered to be a late-surviving, refugial population of humans, that overlapped with, and survived alongside, early modern human colonisers in Europe', said Professor Tom Higham, who leads the PalaeoChron research group at the University of Oxford.