Researchers at the University of California have developed a climate model that could explain how Neanderthals were somehow able to cling on in southern Iberia, while modern humans were taking over the rest of Europe.

Pierre Sepulchre from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues modelled climate and vegetation patterns over the Iberian peninsula around 40,000 years ago to study the impact of “Heinrich event 4″ – an episode of sluggish circulation and falling temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean that lasted for some 2000 years.

They found that southern Iberia had become desert-like and undesirable for modern humans, starting around 39,000 years ago, and this condition persisted for at least 1000 years.

“Climate change reduced the resources, so that modern humans had no interest in continuing their expansion to the south. They did so only after conditions became favourable again,” said Sepulchre.

According to the researchers, the finding quashes the theory that rapid climate swings made Europe uninhabitable, but that southern Iberia remained a “Garden of Eden” in which the Neanderthals could still survive.

The findings appear in the journal New Scientist. (ANI)