Overview
- A study published Monday in PNAS reports five years of systematic excavation at Üçağızlı II Cave in southern Türkiye and presents a detailed layer-by-layer comparison of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens occupations.
- The team dated Neanderthal use of the site to about 77,000–59,000 years ago and Homo sapiens use to about 59,000–47,000 years ago and recovered roughly 19,252 stone tools and 24,236 animal bones.
- Across those layers the assemblages show the same Mousterian-style flint tools, the same hunted species (goat, deer, boar), and repeated transport of the small marine snail Columbella rustica that appears ornamental and sometimes modified.
- The authors interpret these parallels as consistent with regional contact, cultural exchange, or overlapping territories but emphasize they cannot yet prove direct, contemporaneous co-occupation and note the human fossil sample is small.
- The find strengthens evidence that the Levant was a key corridor for cultural interaction, contrasts with sites that show abrupt cultural change, and the team calls for more excavations and integration with genetic and demographic data to test how widely the pattern applies.