The transition in southern Iberia: Insights from paleoclimatology and the Early Upper Palaeolithic

Abstract

The paper by Wood et al. (1) called attention to the dating methodology of ultrafiltration applied to Mousterian sites in the Southern Iberian Peninsula. The dates of two sites, Jarama VI and Zafarraya, are older than expected, after the application of the authors’ methodology to some of the bones from the two sites. This result has important implications because the Southern Iberian Peninsula was formerly proposed as a unique area demonstrating the late survival of Neanderthals in Eurasia (2, 3). In the case of former studies of Gorham and Carihuela (2, 3), the main argument was paleoclimatic, not radiometric. In contrast, most of the recent studies argue on the basis of radiocarbon dates.