A single, broken molar found buried within a windswept rock shelter in southeastern France could push back the first evidence of modern humans in Europe by nearly 10,000 years.
According to an international team, the tooth and dozens of stone tools from the same sedimentary layer belonged to a member of Homo sapiens who lived some 54,000 years ago, a time when Neanderthals were thought to have been the sole occupants of Europe. The findings also paint a remarkable picture of the intimacy of modern humans and their Neanderthal neighbors, suggesting they may have traded occupancy of the cave several times—once in as little as a year.
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The paper’s findings could be revolutionary for our understanding of the transition between the last Neanderthals and the first moderns in Europe, says Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist also at the University of Bordeaux. But he and others want far more evidence. “If the pattern proposed is confirmed by future discoveries, we will certainly need to change our view of this transition,” he says. “Such a paradigm shift is entirely possible but requires … more sites and more unequivocal evidence.”
A single tooth can crumble millenniums of "beliefs", "tradition" and "culture". Ideologies cement in if the mind is incapable of absorbing these realities as they unveil. So, prepare constantly to change your mind. Always.
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