35,000-Year-Old 'Modern'
Human Fossils Found
In Transylvania
The Globe and Mail
3-6-4
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) -- Experts analysing remains of a man, woman
and teenaged boy unearthed in Romania last year are convinced that the
35,000-year-old fossils are the most complete ever of modern humans of
that era, a U.S. scientist said Saturday.
International scientists have been carrying out further analysis to
get a clearer picture on the find, said anthropologist Erik Trinkaus
of Washington University in St. Louis. But it's already clear that
"this is the most complete collection of modern humans in Europe older
than 28,000 years," he said.
"We are very excited about it," Mr. Trinkaus said by phone, adding
that the discovery in a cave in southwestern Romania "is already
changing perceptions about modern humans."
Romanian recreational cavers unearthed the remains of three facial
bones last year and gave them to Romanian scientists.
Mr. Trinkaus travelled to the Romanian city of Cluj this week with
Portuguese scientist Joao Zilhao, a fossil specialist.
Mr. Trinkaus said a jawbone belonged to a man aged about 35. He said
part of a skull and remains of a face, including teeth, belonged to a
14- to 15-year-old male and a temporal bone was from a woman of
unspecified age.
"This was 25,000 years before agriculture. Certainly they were
hunters," said Mr. Trinkaus. He said the bones were discovered in the
foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.
Mr. Trinkaus said the humans would have used stone tools, had
religious beliefs and a well-defined social system, and lived in a
period during which early modern humans overlapped with late surviving
Neanderthals in Europe, Mr. Trinkaus said.
Scientists will not give the exact location for the cave, but Mr.
Trinkaus said the humans survived because the area was "ecologically
variable."
"It was close to the Banat plain and close to the mountains. They
didn't have to travel more than 50 kilometres" to hunt, he said.
A team of international scientists from the United States, Norway,
Portugal and Britain will carry out more field work in the cave and
the surrounding area this summer, Mr. Trinkaus said.
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