It turns out that the first Homo sapiens to reside in Europe lived in southern France before they mysteriously disappeared. Archeologists discovered stone tools and a child’s tooth that pointed to the existence of these humans living in a rock shelter some 54,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the first set of humans, way before the Neanderthals, were estimated to have lived in the location for a few decades.
The discovery pre-dates the earliest known evidence of the species in the continent by 10,000 years. Most of the tools resemble ‘Mousterian technology,’ artifacts that are found at Neanderthal sites across Eurasia. Other tools contained small blades that are more typical of early Homo sapiens technology. While this evidence can point to the existence of an earlier set of human beings in Europe, some researchers remain unconvinced. “I find the evidence less than convincing,” said William Banks, a paleolithic archeologist at the French national research agency CNRS and the University of Bordeaux.
image credit: Ludovic Slimak; Laure Metz
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