Neanderthals

Neanderthal fossils from a cave in Belgium which is believed to belong to the last survivors of the species ever discovered in Europe are thousands of years older than what was assumed, according to a new study that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Neanderthal, (Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), member of a group of archaic humans who emerged at least 200,000 years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) and were replaced or assimilated by early modern human populations (Homo sapiens).

Previous radiocarbon dating of the remains from the Spy Cave yielded ages as recent as approximately 24,000 years ago, but the new testing pushes the clock back to between 44,200 to 40,600 years ago.

Radiocarbon dating is a method that provides objective age estimates for carbon-based materials that originated from living organisms. An age could be estimated by measuring the amount of carbon-14 present in the sample and comparing this against an internationally used reference standard.
Carbon-14 is a weakly radioactive isotope of Carbon; also known as radiocarbon, it is an isotopic chronometer. C-14 dating is applicable to organic materials(not applicable to metals).
All living things absorb carbon from the atmosphere and their food, including the radioactive form carbon-14, which decays over time.
Since plants and animals stop absorbing carbon-14 when they die, the amount that remains when they are dated tells us how long ago they lived.
When it comes to bones, scientists extract the part made up of collagen because it is organic.

Having a firm idea of when our closest human relatives disappeared is considered a key first step toward understanding more about the nature and capabilities of the Neandarthals, as well as why they eventually went extinct while our own ancestors prospered.
Without a reliable framework of chronology we can’t really be confident in understanding the relationships between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

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