Modern Human Incursion into Neanderthal Territories

Dating
To constrain the chronology of the site, we obtained high-quality accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon ages from the University of Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU) and luminescence ages from throughout the sequence at the University of Oxford Luminescence Laboratory, the University of Adelaide laboratory, and, for the base of the sequence, at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (see Materials and Methods). We built a Bayesian model integrating all of the ages in combination with the geo archeological sequence information (Fig. 8 and table S3). We determined that layer E, which contains the modern human fossil, dates to 56.8 ka to 51.7 ka cal. B.P. (95.4% prob.; see Materials and Methods; figs. S15 to S20 and tables S1 to S10), suggesting that this individual is substantially earlier than any previously documented modern human remains or potential transitional archeological assemblages in Europe, and penecontemporaneous with, if not older than, the Manot 1 calvaria from Israel (6).





FIG. 8. The Grotte Mandrin Bayesian model.The model comprises the radiocarbon likelihoods and optically stimulated luminescence ages fitted within a relative age sequence that is based on the succession of archeological levels excavated at the site. A composite stratigraphy is shown at the left illustrating these stratigraphic horizons. Key probability distributions from the Bayesian model are shown on the right. These are either Boundary distributions (the top three) representing the start of a Phase, or Date ranges (the lower four) that represent the age spans of an archeological phase.

Lithics
Neronian industries have been identified in four other sites from the middle Rhône Valley: Néron, Figuier, Moula, and Maras (25), and were initially termed “evolved Mousterian” (26). Unfortunately, these sites were mainly excavated between 1869 and 1950, and their Neronian layers provided few lithics, appearing mixed with Mousterian industries [figs. S7 to S10 and note S3 (20, 25, 26, 28, 29)]. Evidence from Mandrin layer E and comparisons with other penecontemporaneous assemblages allow a fuller understanding of this cultural system. In the Neronian, blades and points are produced from the same technical system, with two schemas that can be recognized: a blade/point and a bladelet/micropoint schema (25). The first phase of flaking is then focused on the making of blades or bladelets before the extraction of well-standardized points (Figs. 2 and 3). The production sequence is initiated with crested blades/bladelets. Blades and points were the exclusive end products of this technology (25). Thin ventral convergent retouch transformed some of these tools into a Soyons Point, a classic typological category of these industries (25, 26). The Neronian industries illustrate a remarkable technical precision in their execution (25). They are characterized by a noticeable proportion of standardized micropoints (25) showing a maximum length of 3 cm for a third of the end products. Tiny points, called nanopoints, can be less than 10 mm in maximum length. Use-wear analyses show that these microliths were mainly used with no secondary modifications (25).
The presence of all production phases, from initiation to the abandonment of the products, shows that the full production process was carried out in the shelter. The Mandrin E lithics were produced from particularly homogeneous raw material blocks of superior quality as compared to the other units of the sequence. This differential selection can in part be attributed to the production systems that require employment of rocks of great homogeneity. Raw material sourcing analysis indicates that the layer E humans had a large territorial influence, since almost half of the rocks (46.6%) come from a very large area, where the nearest rocks come from 15 to 35 km (Meysse-Rochemaure) and up to 60 to 90 km away (20, 25).
Although Levallois point technologies are rare in the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, they are common in the eastern Mediterranean area, and it was recently proposed that Mandrin E shared precise technical features with the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) in the Levantine region (notes S3 and S5) (20). Direct technical comparisons with lithic artifacts from levels XXV to XX at Ksar Akil, Lebanon (stored at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology) and dating to >44.6 ka to 41.6 ka ago (30) and ~43 ka to 39 ka ago (31) show that the Neronian industry bears notable technical similarities with the IUP there (fig. S21). The technologies used to produce the points from both the Ksar Akil IUP and the Neronian are the same, and a comparison of the tip cross-sectional area (the ratio of width/thickness) of points from both sites shows no statistically significant difference (Fig. 9). The beginning of the IUP in the Levant, represented in level 1 at Boker Tachtit (32), is slightly younger than the Neronian in Mandrin (see Materials and Methods and fig. S20). The IUP industries at Ksar Akil are followed by technically close industries assigned to the Early Upper Paleolithic [EUP; layers XIX to XIV (33, 34)], and it has been demonstrated that the EUP is technically a direct descendant of the local IUP (20, 30–36). A juvenile modern human and a modern human upper jaw were recovered from the EUP and IUP layers of Ksar Akil, respectively, and therefore, most scholars accept that both the IUP and EUP there were made by H. sapiens (20, 31, 37). The similarities between Mandrin E and Ksar Akil suggest that members of the IUP populations spread very early through the Mediterranean basin, pushing back the earliest appearance of the Upper Paleolithic in Western Europe by ~12 ka ago and all of continental Europe by ~10 ka ago.