Remains Suggest Earliest Humans in Europe 41,000 Years Ago

No signs that they were effete, cappuccino-drinking, God-hating socialists, though.

Teeth found in Italy and England are the remains of humans who were in Europe more than 41,000 years ago, making them the earliest Homo sapiens to have lived in the continent on record. Two baby teeth found in in southern Italy in 1964 and a fragment of an adult jaw found in Kents Cavern in 1927, but both specimens were only properly dated this year. There had been concerns that typical dating techniques, such as carbon-14 dating, would contaminate samples, so the British team analyzed fossils found above and below the jaw to determine their age, then split the difference to arrive at a conclusion for the jaw's age: anywhere between 41,500 to 44,200 years old. A similar method was followed for the Italian teeth, albeit using beads found nearby instead of other fossils. Those teeth could be anywhere from 43,000 to 45,000 years old, making them the oldest human remains west of the Caucasus mountains. The conclusions confirm that humans and neanderthals lived side by side in Europe at that time, prompting all sorts of speculation over what role humans played in their cousins' extinction (human-neanderthal war, we hope).