News of this moment in prehistoric archeology clearly comes from France. Again from France, and from the same Mandrin Cave, which as recently as last year hit the front pages of all publications with, they say, the oldest proof of the existence of Homo sapiens in Europe. By the way, about 56,800 years old, more than 10,000 years older than anything known up to that time.

And in this news it says that archaeologists have found projectile tips that they say can only be arrowheads, that they have made reconstructions and they work perfectly on goat carcasses. In a word, they simply rewrote the history of the appearance of the onion in Europe, adding about 40,000 years. Which is no small thing and means a complete paradigm shift. I mean, in this case, you can really say that history is being rewritten without issuing clickbait headlines. And many refused the mentioned information. Others thought. Personally, I agree with the latter, because there is something wrong with this whole story. Let me explain.

What was Homo sapiens looking for in France almost 60,000 years ago?

From absolutely all the data we currently have, and there is a lot of it, the history of Homo sapiens in Europe begins about 47,000 years ago. Let’s say 50 thousand, but that’s just to round up three millennia. These were sporadic incursions by pioneer groups, but this in no way proved that they had any continuity. Successful groups will appear much later. And where were these intrusions reported? In the Balkans. After all, this was to be expected, given that it was the shortest route to the Middle East.

It could also have come from Asia, north of the Black Sea, but we have no evidence to support such movement at that time. Returning to the Balkans, the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens comes from Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, where highly fragmented human remains have been dated to around 47,000 years old. This happened in 2020.

Only a few months after the discovery in Bulgaria, some Czech researchers reproduced a prehistoric skull found about 70 years ago in the Zlata Kun cave. And he told them that he was still about 47,000 years old, not 30,000 as they had originally thought. Thus, both finds, supported by historical evidence from sites in the Balkans, Central Europe, and Eastern Ukraine, confirmed the timid beginnings of “our” colonization of Europe.

The problem arose last year when the French announced that they had broken the agreement that they have our oldest ancestors, some of whom arrived in France around 54,000-60,000 years ago. Where did they find them, sir? The French, led by Ludovic Slimac, an archaeologist who has led excavations there for the past three decades, talk about Mandrin Cave, located near the Atlantic.

The first question that arises in this case, obviously, is how they got there, having established themselves in the Neanderthal homeland. Because, yes, regardless of what you’ve learned about Neanderthals, humans adapted to the harsh, glacial climate of Europe, they also lived in the Mediterranean area, they didn’t stick around to kick it at the base of the polar ice cap. And here Ludovic Slimak intervenes again, who simply explains how those brave men 60 thousand years ago came by boat directly from the Middle East, bypassing Greece and Italy and stopping in the south of France.

Let’s put an end to the fact that you then fired a cannon and could not find Homo sapiens in the East. Instead, you’ll find plenty of archeological sites that confirm the fact that the Middle East was a Neanderthal possession from about 90,000 years ago to 50,000 years ago. In fact, the only evidence of Homo sapiens in this area and time period (I repeat, the only one) is a recently discovered skull in Manot Cave, Israel. The skull is estimated to be about 60,000 years old, while the oldest sedimentary layer in the cave is only about 46,000 years old. But no, it was found on the cave floor, so N factors could have brought it there.

Now, if we say that some individuals who are not in the archaeological record, who left only a skullcap (and this is debatable), were able to swim across the Mediterranean from east to west, says the poet, in the middle of the ice. Age, avoiding the shores that promised them a better life and land, like the mythological Jason on distant shores… I don’t know, but something is sewn with white threads.

Neanderthals, Sapiens, the transition and the suspicious dates of the French

All this information is based on the reproduction of the level at which a fragment of a child’s tooth was discovered, which Slimak attributes to a young individual of the genus Homo sapiens. Note that not all researchers agree on the placement, as the fossil record is too fragmentary to provide such information. Note also that the level in question is between levels that yielded only Neanderthal fossils.

Originally, the material culture associated with this level was described as Neronian, a special term referring to transitional culture. Oh, and it dates back to 39,000 years ago, which coincides perfectly with the emergence of all the transitional cultures in Europe.

What are these transitional cultures? These are material cultures that appeared between 45,000 and 36,000 years ago (sometimes even 32,000 years ago) and which are characterized by the existence of elements characteristic of both Neanderthal man (Musterets) and Homo sapiens through technologies characteristic of the Upper Paleolithic (about objects, ornamentation, tips, microlithization, etc.). No one knows who made them until there are fossils associated with them. An exception was the Chatelperron culture, a transitional culture in France and northern Spain, with Neanderthal fossils found in association with it. In recent years, this version has also been rejected on the grounds that the original interpretations were erroneous.

In summary, no one knows who made the transitional cultures. They can be a sign of the evolution of Neanderthal man and his step from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic. They may also be the creation of Homo sapiens. Or, the most commonly used hypothesis, they may be a sign of cultural exchange between the two species. And they, as I said, appeared in most of Europe about 45,000 years ago.

Even in the East, their early existence is not attested. Slimak refers to his Nero and a possible connection with the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in the Near East. Yes, but their Neronian, according to recent dating, is 57,000 years old. And the Upper Paleolithic in the East occurs, at the earliest, 50,500 years ago (the Bocher Tahtit site in Israel). So, even if they left there, they still did not have the culture that appears in France. Maybe he invented it on a boat while traveling?

If I had to make a comparison, it’s like putting Leonidas’ Spartans in modern military camo suits and having them shoot the Persians with HIMARS systems. That would be the equivalent.

A new history of the bow

If we did mention weapons, then let’s move on to the news of the moment, because that was the topic. However, a Nero-level casuistry description in the Mandrin cave (rather a grotto than a cave) was necessary to understand the case. why Because Ludovic Slimak comes with a new discovery and says that the small dots found at this level “can only be used as arrowheads”. Spikes with a maximum length of one centimeter, found in hundreds, many with traces of blows.

Here we will say that the history of the bow begins about 70,000 years ago in South Africa. There is evidence of its use in Sri Lanka dating back to around 48,000 years ago. But nowhere in Europe have been found traces of its use until now, at least 18,000 years ago. Somewhere it was also normal not to find them before the appearance of Homo sapiens, since the Neanderthal never knew such technological progress.

The problem with these peaks is that they are not found in the archaeological record where the relevant Homo sapiens population is believed to have originated, namely the Middle East 60,000 years ago. This time. Then the question that many experts ask is related to its exclusivity. More precisely, if there was such a cultural invasion of the Neanderthal world, why did they not also copy such an invention? Basically, the arch appears almost 60,000 years ago in Europe and disappears, only to reappear at least 40,000 years later. Why did the people who made the first successful steps into Europe no longer have bow technology?

Last but not least, if these populations had a clear technological advantage around 60,000 years ago, why did they disappear? Why is their world occupied by Neanderthals in both Europe and the Middle East? Why do arrows not appear in any transitional culture in Europe, but only now in France? As I said, something is wrong.

No one disputes the fact that the bow was not an invention that had a major impact on human history. But there were still some cultural steps before that. And such an invention has serious consequences in terms of hunting tactics, the success of some communities, it also leaves certain traces. Some are completely absent from the archaeological record of Europe 60,000, 50,000 and even 20,000 years ago.

What else can be said before such an avalanche of unanswered questions? Instead of scratching the left ear with the right hand, rewriting history with dates bordering on the impossible, isn’t it better to redo the dates once again? Perhaps they return to their old values ​​of 39,000 years and our hearts return to normal.

And something else…

I do not intend to knock on the image of Ludovic Slimak. Man is a difficult name in the world of prehistoric people. But no one was immune from controversy. Slimak became famous mainly due to the research and interpretations proposed in the territory of the northern Urals, near the Arctic Circle, in Bizova. More than 4,000 mammoth fossils have been found at the site, so there must have been a slaughter camp and 313 stones. Lithic objects, which Slimak called Mousterian, that is, Neanderthal.

Considering that the age of the monument was somewhere around 30,000 years, it again sounded like rewriting history. Not only did you have the northernmost Neanderthal site, over 1,000 kilometers from the nearest such site, but you also had it 10,000 years after the presumed extinction of the human species. How will a group of survivors end up beyond the Arctic Circle, far from everything that happened to the world of their ancestors. Sensationally!

However, their re-analysis showed that Slimak was most likely wrong. The works there belong, rather, to the Seletian (transitional culture) with the influence of Aurignac (one of the first forms of cultural manifestation of Homo sapiens). And it fits perfectly with what we knew Homo sapiens could do at that time. In particular, to survive in harsh arctic conditions, where Neanderthals have never been.

But maybe not so much sensationalism is good! I told you, I didn’t give boiling water!

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