September
29
/ 2020
Archaeological excavations at the Lapa do Picareiro cave in Portugal have revealed Palaeolithic stone tools that are rewriting the history of the settlement of Europe by modern humans. The find proves that Homo sapiens arrived in the west of Iberia some 5000 years earlier than once thought. The dating of the site’s artifacts, from approximately 40,000 years ago, indicates that modern humans co-existed with Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis) for a considerable period. This has implications for our understanding of the reasons for the extinction of this species of archaic humans. The exciting discoveries were made in a cave named Lapa do Picareiro, which is in a karst mountain range in central Portugal and not far from the Atlantic coast. Archaeologists
