Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 114, Issue 40, Pages 10606-10611Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1709235114
Keywords
Vindija Cave (Croatia); single-compound AMS dating; DNA analysis; zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry; Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition
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Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme
- ERC [324139, 694707]
- Royal Society
- European Research Council (ERC) [694707, 324139] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Previous dating of the Vi-207 and Vi-208 Neanderthal remains from Vindija Cave (Croatia) led to the suggestion that Neanderthals survived there as recently as 28,000-29,000 B.P. Subsequent dating yielded older dates, interpreted as ages of at least similar to 32,500 B.P. We have redated these same specimens using an approach based on the extraction of the amino acid hydroxyproline, using preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (Prep-HPLC). This method is more efficient in eliminating modern contamination in the bone collagen. The revised dates are older than 40,000 B.P., suggesting the Vindija Neanderthals did not live more recently than others across Europe, and probably predate the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Eastern Europe. We applied zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) to find additional hominin remains. We identified one bone that is Neanderthal, based on its mitochondrial DNA, and dated it directly to 46,200 +/- 1,500 B.P. We also attempted to date six early Upper Paleolithic bone points from stratigraphic units G(1), Fd/d+G(1) and Fd/d, Fd. One bone artifact gave a date of 29,500 +/- 400 B.P., while the remainder yielded no collagen. We additionally dated animal bone samples from units G1 and G(1)-G(3). These dates suggest a co-occurrence of early Upper Paleolithic osseous artifacts, particularly split-based points, alongside the remains of Neanderthals is a result of postdepositional mixing, rather than an association between the two groups, although more work is required to show this definitively.
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