ScienceNews.org wrote:Neandertals blasted out of existence, archaeologists propose
Modern humans may have thrived thanks to geographic luck, not wits
By Bruce Bower

Neandertals didn’t get dumped on prehistory’s ash heap — it got dumped on them. At least three volcanic eruptions about 40,000 years ago devastated Neandertals’ western Asian and European homelands, spurring a rapid demise of these humanlike hominids, says a team led by archaeologist Liubov Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Modern humans survived because they lived in Africa and on the tip of southwestern Asia at that time, safely outside the range of volcanic ash clouds, Golovanova’s group proposes in the October Current Anthropology. If that scenario pans out, then geographic good luck allowed Homo sapiens to move into Neandertals’ former haunts after a couple thousand years without having to compete with them for food and other resources, as many researchers have assumed.

Advances in stone toolmaking and other cultural innovations achieved by modern humans shortly after 40,000 years ago supported survival in harsh, postvolcanic habitats, Golovanova and his colleagues hypothesize.

“For the first time, we have identified evidence that the disappearance of Neandertals in the Caucasus coincides with a volcanic eruption approximately 40,000 years ago,” Golovanova says.

His new study focuses on soil, pollen, animal bones and stone tools from Mezmaiskaya Cave in southwestern Russia’s Caucasus Mountains. Excavation of this cave began in 1987.

In a comment published along with the new study, archaeologist Paul Pettitt of the University of Sheffield in England agrees that Neandertals disappeared at Mezmaiskaya Cave and its surrounding region shortly after volcanic eruptions identified by Golovanova’s team. But the timing of Neandertal and modern human occupations over at least 10,000 years in an area covering tens of thousands of square kilometers in Europe and Asia remains poorly understood, Pettitt cautions.

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