Free Republic

Neanderthal man arrived on the Italian peninsular some 100,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a study set to be published this month. The discovery was made after researchers analyzed radioactive deposits that were found in sediments present inside two Neanderthal skulls unearthed in a gravel pit Saccopastore, Lazio, in the 1930s. The site of the dig is now occupied by an eastern section of Rome's ring road. "The results of our studies show that the Saccopastore remains are 100,000 years older than previously thought -- and push back the arrival of Neanderthal man in Italy to 250,000 years...

A team of researchers working in Italy has confirmed that Altamura Man was a Neanderthal and dating of pieces of calcite which were on the remains has revealed that the bones are 128,000 to 187,000 years old. In their paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the team describes how they extracted a small bone sample and examined it and what they found by doing so. Altamura Man was discovered in a cave in southern Italy in 1993 by cave explorers. The finding was reported to researchers at the University of Bari. The remains were embedded in rock and...