Unexpectedly recent dates for human remains from Vogelherd

The human skeletal remains from the Vogelherd cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany are at present seen as the best evidence that modern humans produced the artefacts of the early Aurignacian(1). Radiocarbon measurements from all the key fossils from Vogelherd show that these human remains actually date to the late Neolithic, between 3,900 and 5,000 radiocarbon years before present ( BP). Although many questions remain unresolved, these results weaken the arguments for the Danube Corridor hypothesis(2)-that there was an early migration of modern humans into the Upper Danube drainage-and strengthen the view that Neanderthals may have contributed significantly to the development of Upper Palaeolithic cultural traits independent of the arrival of modern humans(3,4).