Neanderthals Spread Across Asia With Surprising Speed—and Now We Know How

Modern Neanderthals and Humans divide From a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago, the Neanderthals leaving Africa for Europe and Asia long before Modern humans have joined them Hundreds of thousands of years later. There, the Neanderthals dispersed in Spain and Siberia. Our prehistoric cousins ​​have probably reached Asia for the first time about 190,000 to 130,000 years ago, with another substantial migration to central and eastern Eurasia probably between 120,000 and 60,000 years. But how did they get there?

Since there is not enough archaeological evidence to rebuild their migration paths, a team of anthropologists has turned to computer models. Their simulations have mapped the possible roads that the Neanderthals could have followed to reach Asia and suggest that by traveling during the warmer periods and following the river valleys, they could have crossed about 2,000 miles (3,250 kilometers) in less than 2000 years.

“Our results show that, despite obstacles like mountains and large rivers, the Neanderthals could have crossed northern Eurasia surprisingly quickly,” said Emily Coco, co-author of a study Published yesterday in the journal Plos One, said in a New York University statement. “These results provide important information on the paths of old migration which cannot be studied currently from archaeological archives and reveal how computer simulations can help discover new clues on old migrations that have shaped human history.” Coco began study as a doctoral student at New York University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Algarve.

She and her colleague’s models explained temperature, elevation of land, old rivers and glaciers. While researchers had already used a similar approach to simulate human and animal movement, anthropologists are the first to apply it to Neanderthals, according to the press release. In doing so, they found potential migration paths for two periods characterized by a warmer climate: about 125,000 years ago and 60,000 years ago. The different paths, which used the river valleys, would have taken the Neanderthals to the Siberian Altai mountains in Eurasia along the same northern road through the mountains of Urals and southern Siberia in the 2000 years. Significantly, the paths align with the archaeological sites of known Neanderthals as well as on the areas occupied by the Denisovans, with which scientists know that the Neanderthals have agreed.

“Neanderthals could have migrated thousands of kilometers from the Caucasus mountains in Siberia in just 2000 years following the corridors of rivers,” said Radu Iovita, the other co-author of the study and associate professor at the Nyu’s Center for the Study of Human Origins, in the declaration. “Others have speculated on the possibility of this type of rapid and long -distance migration based on genetic data, but it was difficult to justify due to limited archaeological evidence in the region. Based on detailed computer simulations, it seems that this migration was an almost inevitable result of landscape conditions during past hot climatic periods. ”

Coco and Iovita specify, however, that their model does not consider all the possible elements that could have influenced the Neanderthal movement, such as resources, climate change, short -term weather conditions, vegetation preferences and previous professions, among others. However, in the absence of archaeological files, computer simulations provide a viable method to track down the traces of prehistoric people – even if it is not as creative as Search for stops in the viking migration lanes By sailing on a Nordic clinker boat along the icy Norwegian coast.