Direct dating of Neanderthal remains from the site of Vindija Cave and implications for the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition

Significance Radiocarbon dating of Neanderthal remains recovered from Vindija Cave (Croatia) initially revealed surprisingly recent results: 28,000–29,000 B.P. This implied the remains could represent a late-surviving, refugial Neanderthal population and suggested they could have been responsible for producing some of the early Upper Paleolithic artefacts more usually produced by anatomically modern humans. This article presents revised radiocarbon dates of the human bones from this site obtained using a more robust purification method targeting the amino acid hydroxyproline. The data show that all the Neanderthal remains are from a much earlier period (>40,000 cal B.P.). These revised dates change our interpretation of this important site and demonstrate that the Vindija Neanderthals probably did not overlap temporally with early modern humans.