Recently Yahoo news on-line reported the following:
Bones found in 8-meter-deep pit may ‘fundamentally
change’ history of humans in Europe (1/2)
Katie Hunt, CNN
Thu, February 1, 2024 at 12:53 p.m. PST·5 min read
Microscopic fragments of protein and DNA recovered from
bones discovered in 8-meter-deep cave dirt have revealed Neanderthals and
humans likely lived alongside one another in northern Europe as far back as
45,000 years ago.
The genetic analysis of the fossils, which were found in a cave near the town of Ranis in eastern Germany, suggested that modern humans were the makers of distinctive, leaf-shaped stone tools that archaeologists once believed were crafted by Neanderthals, the heavily built hominins who lived in Europe until about 40,000 years ago.
Modern humans, or homo sapiens, weren’t previously known to have lived as far north as the region where the tools were made.
“The Ranis cave site provides evidence for the first dispersal of Homo sapiens across the higher latitudes of Europe. It turns out that stone artifacts that were thought to be produced by Neanderthals were, in fact, part of the early Homo sapiens toolkit,” said research author Jean-Jacques Hublin, a professor at the Collège de France in Paris and emeritus director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in a news release.
“This fundamentally changes our previous knowledge about the period: Homo sapiens reached northwestern Europe long before Neanderthal disappearance in southwestern Europe.”
The discovery means the two groups, who once interbred and left most humans alive today with traces of Neanderthal DNA, may have overlapped for several thousand years. It also shows that Homo sapiens, our species, crossed the Alps into the cold climes of northern and central Europe earlier than thought.
Three studies detailing the discoveries and lab analysis were published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Earliest Homo sapiens fossils found north of the Alps
To identify who made the artifacts, the team excavated Ilsenhöhle cave near Ranis from 2016 to 2022. When the cave was first excavated in the 1930s, only the tools were found and analyzed. This time around the team was able to dig deeper and more systematically, ultimately uncovering human fossils there for the first time.
“The challenge was to excavate the full 8-metre sequence from top to bottom, hoping that some deposits were left from the 1930s excavation,” said study coauthor Marcel Weiss, a researcher at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in a statement. “We were fortunate to find a 1.7 metre thick rock the previous excavators did not get past. After removing that rock by hand, we finally uncovered the LRJ layers and even found human fossils.”
(to be continued)
Translation
從 8 公尺深的洞穴泥土中發現的骨頭中得到的微細殘破蛋白質和 DNA 表明，尼安德塔人和人類很可能早在 45,000 年前就在北歐生活在一起。
這些化石是在德國東部 Ranis 鎮附近的一個洞穴中發現的，對這些化石中的基因分析表明，現代人類是獨特的葉形石器的製造者，考古學家曾一度認為這些石器是由尼安德塔人製作的，尼安德塔人是體型粗大的古人類。直到大約四萬年前，他們一直生活在歐洲。
人們並不知道現代人類（或智人）先前曾生活在這般北部有製造出工具的地方。
巴黎法蘭西學院教授、兼德國萊比錫 Max Planck進化人類學研究所的名譽主任 Jean-Jacques Hublin, 作為該研究的作者在新聞稿中說: 「Ranis洞穴遺址首次為智人曾在歐洲高緯度地區擴散提供了證據。 事實證明，被認為是由尼安德塔人製造的石製品實際上是早期智人工具包的一部分」。
「這從根本上改變了我們之前對該時期的認識：智人早在尼安德塔人在歐洲西南部消失之前就到達了西北歐」。
這項發現意味著，這兩個群體可能已經重疊了數千年，這兩個群體曾經雜交，並為今天的大多數人類留下了尼安塔特人的 DNA 痕跡。 這也表明，我們智人這個物種,比想像中更早穿越阿爾卑斯山進入北歐和中歐有特定天氣變化的地方。
三項詳細介紹這些發現和實驗室分析的研究週三在《自然》和《自然生態與演化》雜誌上發表。
阿爾卑斯山以北發現最早的智人化石
研究顯示，歐洲其他地方,從摩拉維亞、波蘭東部到不列顛群島，也發現了 Ranis 的石器風格。 考古學家將這種工具風格稱為
Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician（LRJ），以紀念其首次發現的地點。
為了找出這些文物的製作者，該團隊於 2016 年至 2022 年挖掘了 Ranis 附近的 Ilsenhöhle 洞穴。該洞穴於 1930 年代首次挖掘時，僅發現並分析了工具。 這一次，團隊能夠更深入、更有系統地挖掘，最終在那裡首次發現了人類化石。
研究共同作者、弗里德里希-亞歷山大埃 爾蘭根-紐倫堡大學和 Max
Planck 進化人類學研究所的研究員 Marcel Weiss 在一份聲明中表示：「我們面臨的挑戰是從上到下挖掘全部8
公尺的序列，希望能在1930
年代的挖掘後仍留下一些遺物」。 「我們很幸運地發現了一塊 1.7 公尺厚的岩石，以前的挖土機沒有穿過。 在手工清除岩石後，我們終於發現了
LRJ 層，甚至發現了人類化石」。
（待續）
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