We know from the traces left behind in our DNA that Homo sapiens met and mingled with Neanderthals long before our species eventually came to dominate.
Now a new cave excavation points to an even closer relationship between these groups, which appears to have lasted for many thousands of years.
Experts from Türkiye, France, and Japan have been digging down into layers of sediment in the Üçağızlı II Cave in northern Türkiye, part of the Levant region that acted as a corridor for early modern humans to spread to Eurasia from Africa.
They found evidence of Neanderthals (starting from around 77,000 years ago) and modern humans (starting from around 59,000 years ago) living in the same location – but even as the inhabitants of the cave changed, a lot of the stone tools, hunting techniques, and collected objects stayed the same.
It suggests some elements of a common culture between the groups that may have spanned as many as 20,000 years.
“Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction,” says anthropologist Naoki Morimoto from Kyoto University in Japan.
“These two distinct but closely related human groups were not just adapting to the same environment: they were probably sharing symbolic preferences.”
The researchers used a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence, which estimates when grains of sediment were last exposed to sunlight, to date the items found in the cave.
In terms of a shared culture, the most notable discoveries were Columbella rustica snail seashells. These would have had no value as food, so must have been ornamental – and although these shells had previously only been associated with H. sapiens, it turns out that Neanderthals collected them too.
The implication is that these two species were in direct contact, sharing knowledge and traditions over the centuries.
“Our findings suggest shared behaviors between Neanderthals and modern humans that extended beyond subsistence to include nonutilitarian behaviors within the specific geographic and temporal context studied here,” write the researchers in their published paper.
Other discoveries in the cave sediment included teeth, a jawbone, engraved artifacts, and animal remains: including deer, goats, and wild boars.
“Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction.” – anthropologist Naoki Morimoto
The researchers didn’t actually find Neanderthal and early modern human remains together in the same sediment layer (time period), but considering that these communities were hunting the same animals and collecting the same shells, the researchers suggest they were in regular contact.
“Although we cannot yet prove direct contact, the remarkable continuity in technology, hunting practices, and the transport of bead-seashells is consistent with the idea that these populations interacted and shared cultural traditions over time,” archaeologist İsmail Baykara from Gaziantep University in Türkiye told Katie Hunt at CNN.
Peering back this far in time is of course tricky, but studies are regularly appearing that tell us more about the Neanderthals and how they lived – and how they went extinct too.
A lot of recent research indicates that Neanderthals and early modern humans interacted a lot more than may have been assumed in the past.
Despite the significance of the region in the history of human expansion, the fossil findings from the Levant are actually relatively scarce. This new analysis provides some much needed insight into a critical moment for our ancient ancestors.
Related: Neanderthals Buried Their Dead, But In Strangely Different Ways
A similar sort of “behavioral uniformity”, in terms of tools and traditions, has been spotted by researchers once before, backing up the Neanderthal and H. sapiens theory developed in this study – though more digging will be needed to develop the idea further, and to map where and when these cultural crossovers might have happened.
“Our findings are consistent with a recent proposition – albeit one derived from an earlier timeframe (~100 ka) than that of our site – that a uniform culture could have existed across different human species in the Levant during the Late Pleistocene based on archaeological evidence,” write the researchers.
The research has been published in PNAS.
This article was fact-checked by Rachel Garner and edited by Peter Dockrill. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know.
