The project ‘Last Neanderthals at the Crossroads of Central Europe and the Mediterranean’ (NECEM) combines lithic analyses of previously excavated material with new sampling for dating and environmental DNA. New radiocarbon dates from Vindija, presented here, help clarify the chronology of late Neanderthal and early modern human occupations in South-eastern and Central Europe.

The emergence of modern humans during the Late Pleistocene and the phylogenetic fate of the northwestern Eurasian Neandertals have been closely linked to our perceptions of the behavior and abilities of those late archaic humans, the Neandertals. In the past several years, several lines of evidence, including radiometric dating of archeological assemblages, taphonomic analyses of faunal remains, stable isotope analysis of Neandertal remains, the dating of late Neandertal remains, considerations of initial Upper Paleolithic associations and chronologies, and reassessments of Neandertal to early modern human phylogenetic relationships have tended to minimise the perceived behavioral differences between the Neandertals and early modern humans across Europe. Into this context, the discovery of an earlier Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) early modern human child's skeleton at the Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Lapedo Valley, Portugal with distinctive Neandertal features provides further support for the de-dehumanising of the Neandertals. Its anatomical evidence for population blending when early modern humans spread into southern Iberia after 30,000 B.P. indicates that the behavioral differences between the local Neandertals and in-dispersing early modern humans were subtle and did not preclude them from regarding each other as human.

The origins of anatomically modern humans, modern behaviour and the Aurignacian form one of the most dynamic fields of European research. Conard & Bolus (2003) opened a new debate by proposing that the Aurignacian arose from the migration of modern humans. Reviewing the data from the Swabian Jura, the author shows that radiocarbon dating cannot of itself presently support models of the primacy of art, industries or the arrival of modern humans at a particular place.

Research in the Altai region of central Asia is attempting to establish the development and expansion of the Aurignacian to Europe and the Caucasus. New sites and early dates provide important new data on this key question about the emergence of modern humans in Eurasia.