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| Cro-Magnon skull at the Museum of Natural History |
According to archaeologists, the first humans in Europe to show Neanderthal-like traits appeared on the scene over 350,000 and perhaps as early as 600,000 years ago. The first true Neanderthals apparently showed up around 300,000 years ago and “strutted their stuff” across Eurasia for about 170,000 years. Many questions concerning them are unanswered, as they undoubtedly will remain forever.
Did they have a spoken language? According to some archaeologists, based on analysis of Neanderthal remains the answer is “yes”. However, there is no consensus on that point. Were Neanderthals a separate species of humans (Homo neanderthalensis) or merely a sub-species of our own (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis)? Opinion in the scientific community seems to change constantly on that last question.
The most nagging question is undoubtedly what became of them. Here again, opinion is divided, though the subject of this article no doubt played a pivotal role in their demise.
Science is constantly correcting itself, and that is a good thing. That is the cornerstone of progress. Our knowledge of the world around us is not absolute and until it is, corrections will be in order. Would that politics worked as well as the sciences, but I digress.
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| Raquel Welch, One Million Years B.C. |
When one thinks of these cave-dwelling, modern-looking humans, one is probably thinking of peoples who at one time were collectively referred to as Cro-Magnons. Today, however, most paleontologists prefer to use the term European Early Modern Humans (EEMH). Early modern humans in general are usually referred to by the appellation Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH). Some people, probably out of a sense of romanticism more than anything else, still use the term Cro-Magnon when referring to these EEMH. Since I am something of a stick-in-the-mud, and since this topic deals with early southern Europeans, I shall stick to calling them Cro-Magnons.
The oldest remains of AMH found to date are a collection of bones from Omo National Park in southwestern Ethiopia and dated to about 195,000 years ago. Beginning around 125,000 years ago a number of these peoples began leaving eastern Africa and migrating into the Arabian Peninsula. These migrations undoubtedly continued over a long period of time. According to archaeologists the first successful migration (whose migrants left descendants) occurred about 60,000 years ago.
Until several years ago it was believed the first Cro-Magnons wandered into Europe from the Near East a little less than 38,000 years ago. This belief was based on the discovery of a jawbone found in a cave in Romania and dated to about 34,000 to 36,000 years ago. As mentioned in my previous article, however, a discovery made in a cave in southern Italy is changing that belief. Two teeth, previously believed to have belonged to a Neanderthal, are now in fact believed to have been in the mouth of a Cro-Magnon who died between 40,000-42,000 years ago! This would make this fellow the oldest known “modern” European!
The existence of the Cro-Magnons is something that has been known among the scientific community for quite some time. The first Cro-Magnon remains were discovered by French geologist and paleontologist Louis Lartet in 1868 in the commune of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, Dordogne, France. It was later carbon-dated to around 27,680 BP (Before Present). One interesting factoid about the skull is its cranial cavity measure 1,600 cubic centimeters. The skulls of modern humans measures between 1,200-1,700 cubic centimeters. Archaeologists point out that though Cro-Magnons stood about the same height as modern Europeans, their brains, on average, were slightly larger. They also had a somewhat more robust physique. It looks like we lost something in the interim.
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| Female Cro-Magnon skull in the Museum of Natural History |
Less certain is the pigmentation of their hair, eyes and skin. In the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries Nordicists were fond of painting Cro-Magnons with a wide Nordish brush in terms of physical appearance, giving them blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes. On the flip side, Neanderthals, their supposedly more primitive, brutish antecedents, were of course portrayed as being swarthy.
Today’s researchers, however, armed with advances in population genetics and evolutionary biology, are less inclined to accept these contentions. It has been pointed out Neanderthals lived in Europe for over 150,000 years under mostly ice age conditions, that is more than sufficient time for peoples to develop the light hair, eyes and skin needed to match the rigors of their surroundings. Cro-Magnons, on the other hand, wandered into Europe a little over 40,000 years ago from the sun-baked Near East where their ancestors had been living for about 20,000 years. From this many deduce they were of a decidedly darker complexion.
It is also well worth mentioning the noted biological anthropologist C. Loring Brace, after an extensive examination of skeletons of both ancient and modern Europeans, came to the conclusion Cro-Magnons, if they existed today (which by the way, they don’t) would be more closely related to southern Europeans than ones from the north.
Evidence for the presence of Cro-Magnons in Southern Italy comes from a number of sources. As mentioned previously, teeth found in the Grotta del Cavallo in Apulia have been identified as being Cro-Magnon in origin. They have been dated as being 43,000-45,000 BP which would make them the oldest known fossils of modern man found in Europe! The site is associated with the so-called Uluzzian Culture of tool-making. Specimens of tools of the Aurignacian Culture, another period of Cro-Magnon tool-making, have been found in the Fontana Nuova di Ragusa rock shelter in southeastern Sicily, just south of Siracusa. These have been dated to <34,000 BP.
Likewise, there is genetic evidence to establish the existence of Cro-Magnons in Southern Italy. Skeletal remains of a Cro-Magnon man were found in the Paglicci cave site near Rignano Garganico in Apulia. This individual’s remains, dubbed Paglicci 23, have been carbon-dated to 28,000 BP. mtDNA extracted from his bones belongs to Haplogroup H, a haplogroup that remains very common in Europe and still found among a number of Southern Italians. Researchers point out this and other evidences clearly shows Cro-Magnons were our distant ancestors!
Though the Cro-Magnons themselves as a distinct group no longer exist, their legacy survives in us, their children. They gave us their tool-making technologies and their DNA. We are undoubtedly more deeply indebted to them then to the Neanderthals who preceded them, for they supplanted them. In future articles we will deal with later peoples who established the foundations for what would eventually become the great civilizations of the Mediterranean!
Further reading:
1) Brian Fagan: Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans: Bloomsbury Press, 2011
2) Robert Leighton: Sicily Before History: An Archaeological Survey from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age: Cornell University Press, 1999
