After about 30,000 years ago Neanderthal remains are conspicuously absent. Why? In Europe their disappearance occurred soon after a new type of human appeared. These were the Cro-Mangon people known from their fossils to be anatomically fully modern Homo sapiens and physically almost indistinguishable from people today.
There are various proposals concerning the disappearance of the Neanderthal people. One is that they did not in fact die out but they evolved with great rapidity into the Cro-Magons. This proposal has come in and out of favour over the years. It is supported by some Neanderthal fossil that supposedly show modern features and a few Cro-Mognon type remains that display certain Neanderthal characteristics. But the picture is not so simple. In the locality of Saint Cezaire, the later Neanderthal inhabitants were contemporaries of earlier Cro-Mognons. This overlap means the later Neanderthal people at least could not be ancestrial to the early Cro-Magons.
Recent search in Israel adds more data for consideration. Fossils of modern humans from Jabel Qafzeh near Nazareth have been studied since 1935. They are admittedly somewhat "primitive" with slight brow ridges and other features. They have been dated by new techniques such as electron spin resonance and thermoluminescence at 100,000 years old.
Neanderthal remains from Kebara cave on mount Carmel are much younger about 60,000 years of age.
There are two other well known cave sites on Mount Carmel. T Tabun Neanderthal type fossils were previously believed to be 45,000 years of age. Animal teeth from the same level of escavation have also been dated recently by ESR to 120,000 years old. A few hundred yards away is the cave of Skhul with modern type fossil humans for merely estimated at 40,000 years of age. The new dating techniques on associated teeth give an average of around 100,000 years. So Neanderthal and modern people lived in the same area at almost the same period with little sign of one evolving into the other or with enough time for it to happen.
