Advanced radio cabbage dating has given the most accurate age assessment for the ‘LAPEDO -child’, one of the most provocative prehistoric human skeletons ever discovered. But the results of this study published on 7 March in the magazine Science is progressing probably will not solve a continuous debate in the Paleoarcheological Community.
Who is the LAPEDO -child?
In 1998, researchers who explore the LAPEDO Valley in Central Portugal came across an unexpected find: a rock shelter in a cliffbase with the almost intact, of an old child, Ochre-Bewekt skeleton Together with items such as pierced shells and animal bones that may be used in a funeral ritual. The team dug up the bones and transported it to a laboratory, where they later decided that the remains belonged to an approximately 4-year-old Juvenile who lived about 24,500 years ago.
Further analysis revealed that the prehistoric “LAPEDO -child” showed a unique mix of physical characteristics that would soon make them famous: a combination of both human and neanderthal characteristics that suggest a “hybrid” between the two evolutionary family members. For example, the lower limbs of the child were much shorter than those of a modern person, and more looked like a Neanderthal. However, the skull almost completely reflected one Homo SapienIn particular the teeth and inner tower. At the same time, a Pit Occipital Region again reminded Neanderthals.
While they are in between Modern people and Neanderthals Has been documented in the genealogical history of our species, there was a problem: Neanderthals largely left 40,000 years ago – about 20,000 years before this child lived. While bags of gender lingered to mix with people For thousands of years, the estimated age of the LAPEDO -Kind made direct interbredding difficult to believe for some paleoarcheologists.
The two -way to have went back and forth About the implications for decades. One camp argues that the LAPEDO is the offspring of parents of people and Neanderthal, while the other faction claims that they simply show genetic properties that are her hereditary of interpreting further in their family tree.
Hydroxyporline dating
Scientists previously tried to estimate more accurately from the age of the LAPEDO -child using radio cabbage dating methods four times, but each attempt failed. Now, more than 25 years after the discovery, a team with some of the original locators of the LAPEDO -Kind has succeeded in locking up a precise date range. They believe that the LAPEDO -child lived somewhere between 27,780-28,850 years ago.
The breakthrough is due to a new method that is known as a hydroxyporline dating. This approach focuses on specific amino acids, while it also removes more contaminants than standard dating options. Researchers also used hydroxyporline dating on some of the animal bone samples of the cemetery, including rabbits, horses and red deer.
Paleolithic implications
Although this last chapter does not necessarily confirm or deny their origins in the Saga of the LAPEDO -Kind is additional evidence that has been discovered in the years since the first discovery, for sure provides extra credibility to the hybridization theory. Anyway, the new dating techniques offer a more concrete context for the time period of LAPEDO -child, as well as the Paleolithic community that buried them. Researchers also believe that the dating of hydroxyporline will soon help to help paleoarcheologists learn much more about the evolutionary past of humanity.
“The direct date for the LAPEDO-KIND shows that this compound specific radio cabbage dating method can also be applied to poorly preserved samples that would otherwise fail routine pre-treatment methods,” the authors wrote in their research, which suggests that “other morphological and culturally important paleolithic of the Paleolithic-Human Overblijfs” Mladeč -caves In the Czech Republic, as well as those of France Abri Pataud And Saint Césaire sites.
