Disappearing from the World: An Archaeological Perspective on Neanderthal Extinction

This paper is concerned with the statistical precision of radiocarbon dating at the earlier range of its efficacy – the period into which falls the extinction of the Neanderthals. The many potential problems affecting accuracy of this technique are discussed as a caveat as to what one might expect of future research and development in this field. The main aim of the paper, however, is to examine exactly what our chronological precision is in the period 30–40 ka BP, i.e. at around five to seven half lives of radiocarbon. If mathematical models of Neanderthal extinction are correct, the whole process could have occurred within the error of one radiocarbon date at two standard deviations, which does not bode well for understanding what must have been a complex set of processes. The assumptions made by palaeoanthropologists working with this problem are discussed, particularly in relation to how dates are actually used, and how sedimentology affects chronology. These problems aside, a coarse and necessarily provisional attempt to interpret the existing archaeological database is made, with the assumption that Late Middle Palaeolithic and 'transitional' industries are proxy indicators of Neanderthal presence in a region. From this, it is suggested that the processes of Neanderthal extinction began by c. 40 ka BP in the Balkans and Central Europe, radiating out from there, leaving Neanderthals on the periphery of their old distribution (southern Iberia, southern Italy, Crimea, Siberia, and one might predict the United Kingdom) as late as c. 29 ka BP. The processes differ in signature (and therefore by extension nature and quite possibly cause) region to region, and because of this, the role of anatomically modern humans in the extinction of Neanderthals is questioned.