Rolling Back the Years
Radiocarbon dating gets a remake
Archaeologists agree that Neandertals lost their evolutionary fight with Homo sapiens to become the Earth’s dominant humanoid life form. But controversy continues over how long that fight lasted, and whether it was modern humans or changing climate that played the primary role in orchestrating the Neandertals’ demise.
Scientists dispute how long Neandertals overlapped with modern humans. Some experts say that Neandertals hung around until as recently as 24,000 years ago. Others insist that Neandertals vanished closer to 30,000 years ago (SN: 5/13/06, p. 302; SN: 9/23/06, p. 205). Resolving that discrepancy, as well as many other archaeological mysteries, requires precise knowledge of the ages of artifacts from those times. “Without firm chronologic control, it is nearly impossible to determine … relationships between populations and locations,” says Jeff Pigati of the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Tucson, Ariz.