Late Pleistocene Archaeological and Fossil Human Evidence from Lakonis Cave, Southern Greece

Current models of interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans and the Middle- Upper Palaeolithic transition are contradictory due to the uncertainties of the dating methods and the lack of diagnostic hominid fossil remains associated with early Upper Palaeolithic assemblages. In the Balkans and southeastern Europe available evidence consists largely of sketchy, fragmentary, ill-dated finds. Greece represents one of the routes by which modern humans may have entered the continent from the Near East. Excavations at the recently discovered cave complex of Lakonis in Southern Greece have documented an extensive record of hominid use from ca. 100–40 kyr (thousands of years ago). The deposits are chiefly assigned to the Middle Palaeolithic and contain extremely rich cultural remains and overlapping hearths. The lithic assemblages exhibit pronounced technological variability, expressed mainly through the Levallois methods of core reduction, and morphological affinities with the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean sequences. The faunal evidence indicates that hunting was the prime method of animal food acquisition. A Neanderthal tooth associated with Initial Upper Palaeolithic assemblages radiometrically dated to ca. 40 kyr adds to the very small number of taxonomically diagnostic human fossils from early Upper Palaeolithic European contexts. Technological analysis documents a local development of Initial Upper Palaeolithic industries from a Middle Palaeolithic substratum. The latter finds are directly relevant to the current debate regarding Neanderthals and modern humans and indicate that, at least in southern Greece, the makers of early Upper Palaeolithic assemblages were Neanderthals.