Contrary to widespread beliefs that the prehistoric rivals of our direct ancestors were brainless or weaker brutes, science has already offered clear answers on this topic. The Neanderthals, a branch of first humans, lived in tribes, buried their dead, used sophisticated tools and weapons, mastered the fire, and painted primitive art on their cave walls – much like Homo Sapiens did.

And yet the Neanderthals have vanished for good while their competitors from Africa have survived and thrived. Archeologists were in agreement for a long time that they disappeared some 40,000 years ago because of Homo Sapiens migrants, who were better at fighting and hunting.

Not really, according to new findings of a group of researchers who discovered a child’s tooth and stone tools in a cave in southern France last year.

Archeologists digging in the Rhone Valley in France. Credit: BBC

The new fossils suggest that Homo Sapiens were present in western Europe about 54,000 years ago, much earlier than believed until recently, challenging the theory that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals soon after arrival from Africa, according to a study published in the Science Advances journal. 

It means the two species coexisted and even interbred for thousands of years.

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The Homo Sapiens child’s tooth and stone tools were discovered by a team of researchers led by Professor Ludovic Slimak of the Toulouse University in the Mandrin Grotte in a Rhone Valley area. Digging deeper and deeper in the cave, they realized that the just found evidence that Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens populations replaced each other on that site for more than 12,000 years until modern humans prevailed.