Washington: A new study has recently revealed that Neanderthals disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula around 45,000 years ago, or some 5,000 years before the rest of Europe.
A scientific article published in 'Nature' in August 2014 revealed that the Europe an Neanderthals could have disappeared between 41,000 and 39,000 years ago, according to the fossil remains found at sites located from the Black Sea in Russia to the Atlantic coastline of Spain.
However, in the Iberian Peninsula the Neanderthals may have disappeared 45,000 years ago. This was what has now been revealed by data found at the El Salt site in the Valencian Community (Spain).
Bertila Galvan confirmed that both the conclusions are complementary and not contradictory. The new timeline for the disappearance of the Neanderthals allows for a regional reading, limited to the Iberian Peninsula; and which coincides with the remains found at other Spanish sites.
Cristo Hernandez, researcher at ULL, said that this gradual disappearance coincided with a change in the climate creating colder and more arid environmental conditions, which must have had an effect on the lives of these diminishing populations.
The new dating establishes depopulation in this region between the last Neanderthals and the first anatomically modern humans. This fact has been archaeologically proven in a sedimentary hiatus that was found not only in El Salt, but also in other sites on the Iberian Peninsula.
The study is published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
