Using radiocarbon dating technology, National Taiwan University geosciences professor Shen Chaun-chou (沈川洲) and a multinational research team said they have accurately dated the period during which Neanderthals existed.
The university said Shen was invited by the project’s leader, Juan Luis Arsuaga, a Spanish paleoanthropologist, to join a research team consisting of members from 17 research facilities in five countries to determine the period in which Neanderthals existed.
By applying more accurate radiocarbon dating methods than previously used, the team calculated that the bone fossils found at the Sima de los Huesos site in Spain were from at least 430,000 years ago, and possibly as early as 800,000 to 900,000 years ago, while the earliest Neanderthals could have evolved from ancient human groups that left Africa about 2 million years ago.
Before 2010, scientists believed that “modern” humans — or Homo sapiens — left Africa about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago and spread to different parts of the world.
It was thought that Neanderthals went extinct during the last ice age, about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, Shen said.
However, a German report about the DNA sequencing of Neanderthals in 2010 inferred that the homo sapiens that left Africa may have interbred with Neanderthals, before spreading out into the world, he said, adding that therefore research on the Neanderthals has become an important research subject.
The university said the High-Precision Mass Spectrometry and Environment Change Laboratory led by Shen helped the research team make a breakthrough in dating the Neanderthals with more precision, as its dating method can assess material believed to be 1 million years old, while previous methods could only assess material about 300,000 to 400,000 years old.
The team’s research findings were published on the internationally renowned scientific magazine Science on Thursday.
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