• DOI:10.1038/nature05195
• Corpus ID: 4411186

Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe

@article{Finlayson2006LateSO,
  title={Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe},
  author={C. Finlayson and Francisco Giles Pacheco and Joaqu{\'i}n Rodr{\'i}guez-Vidal and Darren A. Fa and Jos{\'e} Mar{\'i}a Guti{\'e}rrez L{\'o}pez and Antonio P{\'e}rez and Geraldine Finlayson and Ethel Allu{\'e} and Javier Baena Preysler and Isabel C{\'a}ceres and Jos{\'e} S. Carri{\'o}n and Yolanda Fern{\'a}ndez Jalvo and Chris P. Gleed-Owen and Francisco Jos{\'e} Jim{\'e}nez Espejo and Pilar L{\'o}pez and Jos{\'e} A. S{\'a}ez and Jos{\'e} Ant{\'o}nio Riquelme Cantal and Antonio S{\'a}nchez Marco and Francisco Giles Guzm{\'a}n and Kimberly M. Brown and Noem{\'i} Fuentes and Claire A. Valarino and Antonio Villalpando and Christopher B. Stringer and F. Francisca Martinez Ruiz and Tatsuhiko Sakamoto},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2006},
  volume={443},
  pages={850-853}
}

• C. Finlayson, F. Pacheco, +23 authors T. Sakamoto
• Published 19 October 2006
• Environmental Science, Geography
• Nature

The late survival of archaic hominin populations and their long contemporaneity with modern humans is now clear for southeast Asia. In Europe the extinction of the Neanderthals, firmly associated with Mousterian technology, has received much attention, and evidence of their survival after 35 kyr bp has recently been put in doubt. Here we present data, based on a high-resolution record of human occupation from Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar, that establish the survival of a population of Neanderthals to 28 kyr bp. These Neanderthals survived in the southernmost point of Europe, within a particular physiographic context, and are the last currently recorded anywhere. Our results show that the Neanderthals survived in isolated refuges well after the arrival of modern humans in Europe.