A tooth that tickles prehistory

Bone ornaments and tools from the Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria dating back 45,000 years • ROSEN SPASOV PRESS OFFICE

Conditions for the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe remain very little known, but a single tooth can write part of history.

The presence of our direct ancestors on the continent has just receded with the discovery in Bulgaria of the remains of a modern man dated 45,000 years, or 5,000 years earlier than previously thought. And it is a molar accompanied by some bone fragments found in 2015 in the Bacho Kiro cave, in Bulgaria, which allowed this journey back in time.

The morphological and genetic analyzes carried out by an international team attribute these fossils to a modern man, and the study led by Jean-Jacques Hublin, professor at the Collège de France and director of the "Evolution of man" department at the Max Institute -Planck in Leipzig, Germany, precisely dates these bones and was published in the scientific journal Nature .

A year ago, another team of scientists announced the discovery of the first Homo sapiens in Greece 210,000 years ago, but this conclusion had been much disputed. Nothing like it today.

Technical advances

If 5,000 years may seem ridiculous in terms of human evolution, it is a pivotal period in Europe:for thousands of years, only Neanderthals occupied the European continent. They were to be gradually replaced by Homo sapiens .

French sites such as Arcy-sur-Cure, in Yonne, or Saint-Césaire, in Charente-Maritime, have delivered artefacts from this period, testifying to technical innovations:flint or bone tools, pigments or ornaments. The human remains associated with these discoveries belonged to Neanderthals.

In the cave of Bacho Kiro, adornments made of bear teeth, created by modern men, were found. Were these techniques invented by Neanderthals, long considered backward, or did they copy inventions of Homo sapiens ? The question is not settled. For Jean-Jacques Hublin, the two groups met before 45,000 years ago and they influenced each other.