It looks like home sapiens wiped out the Neanderthals much faster than previously thought (NYT, GNXP). This is consistent with the pattern for human appearance in new ecologies seen elsewhere.
Update #1: a nice commentary on this by John Hawks.
In 2006, Higham and colleagues reported that dates obtained for the Vindija G1 Neandertals, at 29,000 BP, were too young by some 4000 years [3]. That result is listed in the current paper as "doubtful" becuase it did not employ the latest purification strategies. That helps to show that the current paper is "equal opportunity" -- past results from the Oxford Accelerator unit are not immune to doubt. But it is hardly confidence-raising. If we cannot trust radiocarbon determinations made in the last five years, why should anyone submit further samples for testing?
Personally, this was my reaction to the paper: don't grind up any more human bone until the radiocarbon community is unified about sample processing techniques. Let them work it out on the fauna.
The paper lists 15 direct dates on Neandertal specimens younger than 40,000 calendar years BP (some of them multiple samples from single skeletal remains). It lists all 15 of these as doubtful because they do not employ the latest techniques. That is a point emphasized by Higham also (and reflected in several past papers): these date determinatinos are not trustworthy given what we know about sample contamination by recent carbon-14. The Oxford group has put out several papers on this problem. One of the most useful is by Blockley and colleagues [4] because it introduces the device of using the Cantabrian Ignimbrite ash horizon as a marker to compare dates -- dates below the horizon should be consistent, whereas a large sample of actual date estimates include many that are far too young.
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