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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 11, 2026

Primer Extension Capture: Targeted Sequence Retrieval from Heavily Degraded DNA Sources

Primer Extension Capture: Targeted Sequence Retrieval from Heavily Degraded DNA Sources

Published on: September 3, 2009

Placing late Neanderthals in a climatic context.

P C Tzedakis¹, K A Hughen, I Cacho

¹Earth and Biosphere Institute, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. p.c.tzedakis@leeds.ac.uk

|September 14, 2007

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This study uses a novel radiocarbon climatostratigraphy to date Neanderthal artefacts from Gorham

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Area of Science:

Paleoclimatology
Archaeology
Quaternary Science

Background:

Precise climatic dating of Palaeolithic finds is challenging due to radiocarbon calibration uncertainties and lack of master climate chronologies.
Existing methods struggle to correlate archaeological finds with specific climate events, complicating interpretations of human evolution.
The role of climate in Neanderthal extinction remains debated, partly due to difficulties in precisely dating their final occupations.

Observation:

A new method maps radiocarbon dates directly onto the Cariaco Basin 14C series, bypassing calendar age uncertainties.
This radiocarbon climatostratigraphy is applied to Mousterian artefacts from Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, dated to approximately 32,000, 28,000, and 24,000 14C years BP.
These dates are placed within the millennial-scale climate context of the last glacial period.

Findings:

The earliest two date sets (32,000 and 28,000 14C years BP) correlate with intervals of general climatic instability, not Heinrich Events.
The youngest date (24,000 14C years BP), if accepted, suggests Neanderthals persisted until a major environmental shift including increased ice volume.
Different dating scenarios reveal distinct possibilities for climate's role in Neanderthal extinction.

Implications:

The radiocarbon climatostratigraphic approach offers a powerful tool for dating and contextualizing archaeological finds within palaeoclimate records.
This method can refine our understanding of the climatic factors influencing Neanderthal survival and extinction.
It provides a framework for evaluating the climatic signature of critical intervals in Late Pleistocene human evolution.