Aug 20, 2014 02:56 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests previous studies may have been wrong about the die-off of European Neanderthals, meaning the overlap with modern humans was much longer.

According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Nature found that modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe may have coexisted 10 times longer than previously thought. These two groups also likely interacted, exchanging ideas and other cultural aspects.

The scientists said the two species actually live alongside one another for 5,000 years and that modern humans arrived as early as 45,000 years ago. The new study adds to the largely mysterious history of Neanderthals.

"I think we can set aside the idea of a rapid extinction of Neanderthals caused solely by the arrival of modern humans," study lead researcher Thomas Higham, a professor at the University of Oxford, told BBC News. "Instead we can see a more complex process in which there is a much longer overlap between the two populations where there could have been exchanges of ideas and culture."

Past studies have had trouble dating the Neanderthal species, as many remains are hard to read and the results can be unreliable.

"They were hunting the same animals, collecting the same plants and wanting to live in the best caves. So there would have been an economic competition," Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the study, told BBC News. "But it was not an instantaneous extinction.

"They were not hunted down and killed by modern humans or wiped out by diseases they might have brought with them from Africa. It was a more gradual process."

Higham told Reuters his research is significant because it is contributing to the science community's efforts to add pixels to the overall picture.

"Now that we are using better techniques, the picture is becoming much more clear in terms of the process by which Neanderthals disappeared from Europe," he said. "Our results suggest there was a mosaic of populations."

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