European early modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals

Author:

Trinkaus Erik

Abstract

A consideration of the morphological aspects of the earliest modern humans in Europe (more than ≈33,000 B.P.) and the subsequent Gravettian human remains indicates that they possess an anatomical pattern congruent with the autapomorphic (derived) morphology of the earliest (Middle Paleolithic) African modern humans. However, they exhibit a variable suite of features that are either distinctive Neandertal traits and/or plesiomorphic (ancestral) aspects that had been lost among the African Middle Paleolithic modern humans. These features include aspects of neurocranial shape, basicranial external morphology, mandibular ramal and symphyseal form, dental morphology and size, and anteroposterior dental proportions, as well as aspects of the clavicles, scapulae, metacarpals, and appendicular proportions. The ubiquitous and variable presence of these morphological features in the European earlier modern human samples can only be parsimoniously explained as a product of modest levels of assimilation of Neandertals into early modern human populations as the latter dispersed across Europe. This interpretation is in agreement with current analyses of recent and past human molecular data.

Publisher

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference61 articles.

1. Trinkaus E (1981) in Aspects of Human Evolution, ed Stringer CB (Taylor & Francis, London), pp 187–224.

2. Day MH Stringer CB (1982) in L'Homo erectus et la Place de l'Homme de Tautavel parmi les Hominidés Fossiles, ed de Lumley H (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris), pp 814–846.

3. Has the combination of genetic and fossil evidence solved the riddle of modern human origins?

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