A study suggests that humans and Neanderthals actually coexisted culturally and had sexual contact.

Neanderthals penetrated Europe before the modern humans did. It is believed that they extinct about 40,000 years ago. They are the closest relative of modern humans and lived in Europe and Asia.

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The findings showed the fossils of Neanderthals in Europe might be thousands of years older. There's a possibility that they went extinct before the arrival of modern humans in Europe staring about 42,000 years ago.

Previous studies suggested that the last batch of Neanderthals stayed on the Iberian Peninsula until about 35,000 years ago and believed to share the region with modern humans for millennia.

The recent findings suggest that modern humans did not cause the rapid extinction of Neanderthals.

Due to the closest relation of Neanderthals and modern humans, they could actually interbreed. Anyone outside Africa has a Neanderthal origin with 1.5 to 2.1 percent of his DNA being Neanderthal.

The extinction of Neanderthals is remains a mystery. To solve this, scientists analyzed bone, charcoal and shell materials from 40 archaeological sites from Russia to Spain.

Advanced techniques involved ultra-filtering molecules from bone samples for the examination and the removal of organic contaminants are employed

It is done to get more precise dating of these specimens.

The result suggests that Neanderthals disappearance from Europe happened between about 41,000 and 39,000 years ago.

"I think that, for the first time, we have a reliable extinction date for Neanderthals. This has eluded us for decades," said Tom Higham, study author and radiocarbon scientist at the University of Oxford in England.

Apparently, there is some genetic evidence that showed the decline in genetic diversity of Neanderthals in Western Europe during the time modern humans started to arrive in Europe.

"We know, of course, that we have a genetic legacy from Neanderthals of about 1 to 2 percent, so there was interbreeding," said Higham.

In Higham’s recent unpublished yet data suggest that interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals happened between 55,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Higham said that they needed more genetic analysis of human bone from the transitional period in Europe.

The scientists are planning to involve Europe and wider Eurasia in extending their work in order to widen the data set.

Higham said that they plan to check more patterns that could lead to the extinction of Neanderthals and the population spread of modern humans.

Tagsneanderthals, Modern Humans, Neanderthal extinction, Human evolution, Science