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Our new paper on Shukbah in @SciRep describes the tooth of a ~9yr old Neanderthal, associated with Nubian Levallois technology which (tl;dr) marks the southernmost known Neanderthal fossil and indicates we should not assume Nubian Levallois = Homo sapiens https://www.shh.mpg.de/1957277/blinkhorn-nubian-technology?c=1935799
This was a great team effort and its been a pleasure to work with @clementzanolli , Tim Compton, @huw_groucutt, @DrEleanorScerri , Lucile Crété, @ChrisStringer65, @MDPetraglia and @SimonBlockley1 on this
The @NHM and @PACEA team use attribute and 3d morphometric studies to clearly demonstrate the Neanderthal affinity of the tooth through comparisons to other SW Asian Neanderthals, Pleistocene Homo sapiens and Holocene Homo sapiens
This extends the known range of Neanderthals southwards, raising questions of how this population engaged with new ecologies as they expanded through the Levant and how much further south did they expand?
The @CQR @RHULGeog @MPISHH team studied over half (n=707) of the Layer D stone tools from Shukbah, including those at @UCLarchaeology, @britishmuseum @Pitt_Rivers @MAACambridge, @peabodymuseum revealing the 16 Nubian Levallois point cores and 12 Nubian Levallois points
Comparative study of the stone tools with a range of Late Pleistocene assemblages in SW Asia and Africa suggest Nubian Levallois technology from Shukbah falls within a shared range of variability amongst other approaches to Levallois point production
We also identify a single Nubian Levallois core at Bisitun (Iran), another Middle Palaeolithic site with Neanderthal fossils, studied @pennmuseum
"The wide distribution of Nubian Levallois technology across time, space and technological contexts, as well as typically appearing in low numbers, questions their utility as a robust indicator for cultural inheritance"
"Our results indicate that any direct link between Nubian Levallois technology and Homo sapiens can no longer be assumed."
For me, working on this paper had a number of firsts - working on Neanderthals, looking at the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic in detail, working at sites with hominin fossils - and looking at Neanderthal (rather than Homo sapiens) expansions
This work is funded by the @LeverhulmeTrust, @maxplanckpress, @MPI_SHH, @CNRS, the Calleva Foundation and Human Origins Reasearch Fund
We especially thank the numerous research, curators, and institutions who enabled access to the wide range of comparative fossil and lithic collections studied
