Pre History - the archaeology of the ancient Near East · PreHistoryPodcast

Episode 6: Humans, Neanderthals and the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

·27 min·1 clip

Two percent of modern human DNA comes from Neanderthals, but that does not resolve their disappearance.

1. Prehistory examines the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, a 10,000-to-15,000-year shift from Neanderthal-dominated to human-dominated landscapes in the Near East. 2. Jane, the show's host, uses Levantine sites, stone-tool sequences, and dating methods to assess how Neanderthals and modern humans interacted. 3. The episode argues that two percent Neanderthal DNA proves interbreeding occurred but cannot by itself explain Neanderthal disappearance. 4. Nineteenth-century archaeologists treated Neanderthals as human ancestors, while later debates divided between interbreeding, displacement, and violent replacement. 5. Radiocarbon dating measures carbon-14 decay into carbon-12, but early versions generally reached only about 40,000 years ago. 6. Improved sample processing now extends radiocarbon dating to approximately 50,000 years, while OSL dates sediment by measuring exposure to sunlight. 7. Initial Upper Paleolithic sites beginning around 49,000 or 50,000 years ago combine blade technology with Mousterian and Levallois flakes. 8. Almut Cave Neanderthals date to about 50,000 years ago, while Shovak Cave Middle Paleolithic layers reach 45,000 years ago. 9. A 55,000-year-old human skull from Manot Cave supports the possibility that humans lived in the Levant before blade-based Upper Paleolithic technology emerged. 10. Archaeology students and listeners interested in human evolution.

As heard by us

A clear, grounded look at how shared landscapes and dating evidence frame Neanderthals' end in the Near East.

The episode frames the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition as a story of closeness, movement, and survival in the Near East. It traces humans leaving Africa, Neanderthals already present in the Levant, and later Middle Paleolithic sites stretching from southern Jordan to the…

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You want to hear how two human species sharing one landscape may have sharpened the tools of survival.

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