EUROREFUGIA

Getting to know our closer relatives

Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans are two distinct human species which confronted each other in Europe around 45,000 years ago, after which Neanderthals probably withdrew to refuge areas and eventually became extinct. Researchers in the EUROREFUGIA project aim to shed new light on the causes of this rapid replacement, as Dr Ana B. Marín-Arroyo explains

The Neanderthal population is thought

to have been replaced in Europe by our own species (Homo sapiens) between 40,00045,000 years ago, who forced them to withdraw to certain refugia areas including the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas. The causes of this rapid replacement, during the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition, are the subject of continued debate, to which the EUROREFUGIA project aims to contribute. “We’re reconstructing the diet and subsistence strategies of both late Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans in central Serbia and the Cantabrian Region in northern Spain, where the archaeological record is incredibly rich and well preserved,” explains Dr Ana B. Marin-Arroyo, the project’s Principal Investigator.

The project is focused on studying this key period of human evolution, following a multi-disciplinary approach that includes a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction based on stable isotopic analyses conducted on animal bone remains and also a zooarchaeological and taphonomic study of the faunal assemblage as the best evidence of the diet carried out by both human species. Researchers are looking at archaeological evidence gathered from residential sites located in both the central Balkans and the northern Iberian Peninsula such as in El Mirón and La Viña caves. “There is enough data to confirm that some late Neanderthal groups lived in Iberia before the arrival of modern humans, while we are also studying remains from Šalitrena Pećina, a Serbian cave site, to the south of the Danube, where a rich and diverse evidence of both human species occupation have been found for the first time.”

Bioarchaeology research

This represents a relatively new area of investigation at the University of Cantabria, where Dr Marín-Arroyo is based, and where she is keen to lay the foundations for sustained research in the long term. With funding from a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant since 2012, Dr MarínArroyo has worked to both establish a new laboratory and to recruit staff with the necessary expertise. “I’m particularly proud of having been able to open a novel research line on Bioarchaeology at this University, and to create a team despite the economic uncertainties in recent years,” she outlines.

The project team brings together researchers from Spain, Germany, the UK, Serbia and Canada, combining different areas of knowledge. A core discipline within the project is the analysis of the remains of animals that were hunted and consumed by both human species, from which important insights can be drawn. “The study of the animal bones accumulated by human groups allows us to not only reconstruct their diet, but also to establish their adaptive skills and resilience to environmental changes. We can understand how they contributed carcasses to the caves, why they targeted different prey, how long they travelled to hunt or if they suffered nutritional stress, among other aspects of their subsistence strategies,” says Dr Marín-Arroyo. “We can also identify the cut marks on the bone surface (taphonomy) and reconstruct how Neanderthals and modern humans killed and cooked the animals they brought to the caves.”

Researchers are also analysing the chemical composition of these bones, extracting information on two main stable isotopes, Carbon and Nitrogen. From this work, more can be learned about the environments in which both human species lived. “Carbon and Nitrogen values can tell us about past vegetation cover, rainfall and temperatures during this period.”

The earth’s climate changed significantly at this time, with very acute and rapid oscillations in no more than a few decennials. This has been put forward as one possible factor in the extinction of the Neanderthals, although a more quantitative relationship is still missing. In this sense, the project brings together new data on climate with detailed information on the humans’ diet. “We evaluate the diet and relate it to climate. Our aim is to estimate whether, given the recorded climatic and environmental changes, the subsistence strategy adopted by both human species was effective or not,” says Dr Marín-Arroyo. “In this way we can assess how well late Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans coped with climate imbalances.”

Evidence from ice and marine-cores shows that the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition was a time of dramatic climatic shifts globally. Recently, this has been related to the extinction of megafauna and it is likely it had a significant impact on the subsistence strategies adopted by both Neanderthals and modern humans, as well as on their very survival. However, there is a relative scarcity of climatic terrestrial information on this period in Europe in general, and in both the Balkans and northern Iberia in particular. Dr MarínArroyo highlights the project’s work on a Serbian cave called Šalitrena Pecina, which will make an important contribution in these terms. “This is the first time that a

View of the Laboratory of Bioarchaeology.

Upper Image: Dr Marín-Arroyo studying animal bones left after being consumed by Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans.

Lower Image: Dr Jones extracting animal bone collagen to analyse stable isotopes.

Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic site in the central Balkans is being studied in an interdisciplinary way. We obtained radiocarbon dates from this site, proving that the last Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans were in this region. We have also analysed thousands of animal bone remains directly coming from their diet, including some bone tools” she outlines.

This information will help researchers to build a more complete picture of their culinary preferences. “It looks like both Neanderthals and modern humans were capable hunters. This is important, because Neanderthals have long been considered to be less sophisticated than modern humans, yet more and more empirical evidence has emerged to suggest otherwise,” says Dr Marín-Arroyo.

We’re reconstructing how late Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans adapted their diet and

subsistence strategies in the central Balkans and the north of the Iberian Peninsula to an unstable climatic environment

Evidence suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans also made different transport decisions with respect to the hunted prey, another important aspect of the project’s work. Dr Marín-Arroyo says Neanderthals tended to move on from residential cave locations fairly quickly. “We have found that Neanderthals did not live for a long time in a single cave, but were in fact quite mobile, whereas modern humans were relatively more stable and settled, and had the ability to travel longer to procure food,” she outlines.

Palaeoclimatic records

The wider goal in this research is to assess the hunting skills and subsistence strategies of both species and their ability to cope with a changing climate, which will inform the ongoing debate around why modern humans replaced Neanderthals. While the sites in Serbia and northern Iberia are thought to have acted as refugia for Neanderthals, they aren’t the only areas of bioarchaeological interest in Europe, and Dr Marín-Arroyo is keen to further widen the scope of her research. “We need more funding to build more precise palaeoclimatic records,” she says. The next step will be to pursue further research in Italy and to complement the ongoing study in Iberia and the Balkans. The information gattered will be of great relevance for Palaeolithic studies worldwide and therefore, it will be shared with the scientific community. “We plan to disseminate our findings extensively, so that everybody who is interested in this area can use the chronological, climatic and subsistence data and make comparisons with findings from other regions of Europe.”

Full Project Title

Human subsistence and climate change in European refugia: late Neanderthals and early modern humans (EUROREFUGIA)

Project Objectives

EUROREFUGIA is focused on the study of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe and aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about the causes of the rapid replacement of Neanderthals by modern human populations, and the survival of Neanderthals in certain refugia areas until their final extinction. To do so, the project is based, on the one hand, in an archaeozoological analysis of the final Mousterian and early Upper Palaeolithic levels from several key archaeological sites located on the Cantabrian Region such as La Viña and El Mirón Cave and Šalitrena Pećina, located in Central Serbia. On the other hand, the role of climate on the strategy of subsistence is being evaluated by analyzing the stable isotopes (C and N) on macromammals consumed by both human species and found in those Spanish and Serbian sites with Middle to Upper Paleolithic transitions levels. Therefore, the climatic variations will be correlated with subsistence strategies in each region.

Project Funding

Marie Curie Career Integration Grants (CIG) Ref.N 322112. 100,000 euros

Project Partners

• Michael Richards • Jennifer Jones • Jeanne Marie Geiling • Lucía Agudo • Bojana Mihailović • Manuel González Morales

Contact Details

Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria (IIIPC), Universidad de Cantabria Edificio Interfacultativo Avda. de los Castros, s/n 39005 Santander – Cantabria – SPAIN T: +34 942 202 095 E: anabelen.marin@unican.es W: https://eurorefugia.wordpress.com/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/ uclaboratoriobioarqueologia/

Dr Ana B. Marín-Arroyo

Dr Ana B. Marin-Arroyo is a senior Research Fellow at the International Institute for Prehistoric Research at the University of Cantabria. Her research is focused on Bioarchaeology, with a particular interest in the the analysis of animal bones to reconstruct human-environment interactions in the past.