First Modern Humans in Europe

Cro-Magnon Man

Modern humans are believed to have reached Europe in significant numbers by around 45,000 years ago, but some bold pioneers may have show up long before that (See "210,000-Year-Old Modern Human Skull in Greece" below).

Charles Q. Choi wrote in Live Science: For years, the oldest confirmed signs of modern humans in Europe were teeth about 42,000 years old that archaeologists had unearthed in Italy and Bulgaria. These ancient groups were likely Protoaurignacians — the earliest members of the Aurignacians, the first known hunter-gatherer culture in Europe. However, a 2022 study revealed that a tooth found in the site of Grotte Mandrin in southern France's Rhône Valley suggested that modern humans lived there about 54,000 years ago, a 2022 study found. This suggested Europe was home to modern humans about 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. In the 2022 study, scientists linked this fossil tooth with stone artifacts that scientists previously dubbed Neronian, after the nearby Grotte de Néron site. Neronian tools include tiny flint arrowheads or spearpoints and are unlike anything else found in Europe from that time. [Source:Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, May 4, 2023]

It is widely assumed that cold, inhospitable weather prevented modern humans from entering Europe earlier than they did. By 35,000 years they were well established and quickly dominated and replaced Neanderthals that began declining about the same time modern humans arrived. The population shrank a great deal during the Ice Age 20,000 years ago then rebounded. The Ice Age nearly wiped out humans.

DNA studies indicate that 6 percent of Europeans arose from the first people who arrived about 45,000 years ago. These people are more numerous in certain places like the Basque region and remote parts of Scandinavia. Another 80 percent arrived 30,000 to 20,000 years ago before the peak of glaciation. The remaining 10 percent arrived about 10,000 years ago.

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Early Evidence of Modern Humans in Europe

Greece — 45,000 years before present — Mount Parnassus — Geneticist Bryan Sykes identifies 'Ursula' as the first of The Seven Daughters of Eve, and the carrier of the mitochondrial haplogroup U. This hypothetical woman moved between the mountain caves and the coast of Greece, and based on genetic research represent the first human settlement of Europe.
Italy — 43,000–45,000 years before present — Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia — Two baby teeth discovered in Apulia in 1964 are the earliest modern human remains yet found in Europe.
United Kingdom — 41,000–44,200 years before present — Kents Cavern — Human jaw fragment found in Torquay, Devon in 1927 [Source: Wikipedia +]

Mount Parnassus in Greece

Germany — 42,000–43,000 years before present — Geißenklösterle, Baden-Württemberg — Three Paleolithic flutes belonging to the early Aurignacian, which is associated with the assumed earliest presence of Homo sapiens in Europe (Cro-Magnon). It is the oldest example of prehistoric music.
Lithuania — 41,000–43,000 years before present — Šnaukštai (lt) near Gargždai — A hammer made from reindeer horn similar to those used by the Bromme culture was found in 2016. The discovery pushed back the earliest evidence of human presence in Lithuania by 30,000 years, i.e. to before the last glacial period.
Romania — 37,800–42,000 years before present — Pe tera cu Oase — Bones dated as 38–42,000 years old are among the oldest human remains found in Europe. +

France — 32,000 years before present — Chauvet Cave — The cave paintings in the Chauvet Cave in southern France have been called the earliest known cave art, though the dating is uncertain.
Czech Republic — 31,000 years before present — Mladeč caves — Oldest human bones that clearly represent a human settlement in Europe.
Poland — 30,000 years before present — Obłazowa Cave — A boomerang made from mammoth tusk
Russia — 28,000-30,000 years before present — Sungir — Burial site
Portugal — 24,500 years before present — Abrigo do Lagar Velho — Possible Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrid, the Lapedo child
Sicily — 20,000 years before present — San Teodoro cave — Human cranium dated by gamma-ray spectrometry +

Modern Humans in France 54,000 Years Ago?

In 2022, scientists announced that they had pretty firm evidence that modern humans lived in France 54,000 year ago. In an article in The Conversation they wrote: “Perched about 325 feet (100 meters) up the slopes of the Prealps in southern France, a humble rock shelter looks out over the Rhône River Valley. It’s a strategic point on the landscape, as here the Rhône flows through a narrows between two mountain ranges.[Source: 1) Jason E. Lewis, Lecturer of Anthropology and Assistant Director of the Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York); 2) Ludovic Slimak, CNRS Permanent Member, Université Toulouse — Jean Jaurès; 3) Clément Zanolli, Paleoanthropologist, Université de Bordeaux, and 4) Laure Metz, Archaeologist at Aix-Marseille Université and Affiliated Researcher in Anthropology, University of ConnecticutThe Conversation, February 10, 2022]

For millennia, inhabitants of the rock shelter would have had commanding views of herds of animals migrating between the Mediterranean region and the plains of northern Europe. The site, recognized in the 1960s and named Grotte Mandrin after French folk hero Louis Mandrin, has been a valued location for over 100,000 years. The stone artifacts and animal bones left behind by ancient hunter-gatherers from the Paleolithic period were quickly covered by the glacial dust that blew from the north on the famous mistral winds, keeping the remains well preserved.

“In the journal Science Advances, we describe our discovery of evidence that modern humans lived 54,000 years ago at Mandrin. That’s some 10 millennia earlier than our species was previously thought to be in Europe and over a thousand miles west (1,700 kilometers) from the next-oldest known site, in Bulgaria. And fascinatingly, Neanderthals appear to have used the cave both before and after the modern human occupation.

How did these modern humans arrive so early in Western Europe? We know from the source locations of the flint used to make the artifacts in Grotte Mandrin that both Neanderthals and modern humans roamed widely, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) in all directions around the site. Archaeological evidence from Australia shows that modern humans reached that continent by as early as 65,000 years ago. Of course they would have needed a boat to cross the open ocean to get there. It therefore isn’t a stretch to assume that people in the Mediterranean had access to boat technologies 54,000 years ago and used them to explore along the coastlines of this contained sea.

Evidence of Modern Humans in France 54,000 Years Ago

The scientists wrote: “The first curious finding to emerge during the initial decade of Grotte Mandrin excavations were 1,500 tiny triangular stone points identified in what we labeled Layer E. Some less than half an inch (1 centimeters) in length, these points resemble arrowheads. They have no technological precursors or successors in the 11 surrounding archaeological layers of Neanderthal artifacts in the cave. “Who made them? A handful of other sites in the middle Rhône Valley also contain these tiny points. But those sites were excavated long ago with pickaxes, making it hard to tell whether the points showed up abruptly or gradually over time, perhaps with Neanderthals having developed the methods to make them. In 2004, one of us, Ludovic Slimak, named this distinctive tradition “Neronian” after the nearby site where such tiny points were first excavated.

“Without more local sites for comparison, two of us, Laure Metz and Slimak, looked to a region where modern humans were definitely living by 54,000 years ago: the Eastern Mediterranean. In particular, the site of Ksar Akil near Beirut preserves what may be the longest and richest Paleolithic record in all Eurasia.

“Our analyses of the stone artifacts from Ksar Akil show a similarly aged sediment layer with tiny points of the same size and made in the same technical traditions as those of Mandrin. This similarity strongly suggested that the Neronian artifacts were made not by Neanderthals, but rather by a group of modern human explorers who entered the region much earlier than we had expected.

“The final piece of the puzzle came in 2018, when one of us, Clément Zanolli, analyzed the nine hominin teeth we’d found throughout the different layers during excavation. Through painstaking analyses using CT scans and comparisons with hundreds of other fossils, we were able to determine that the Mandrin E tooth, a single baby tooth from a child between 2 and 6 years of age, came from an early modern human and cannot be from a Neanderthal. Based on the stone point technologies and their contexts in other sites, along with this fossil evidence, we conclude that the makers of the Neronian points in Grotte Mandrin were modern humans.

Modern Humans in Italy 45,000 Years Ago

The earliest direct evidence of modern humans in Europe is Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia, Italy Italy. Two baby teeth, discovered there in 1964 and carefully dated in 2011, were determined to be 45,000 years old according to a study published in Nature. [Source: Jonathan Amos, BBC News, November 2, 2011]

Jonathan Amos of BBC News wrote: “The results fit with stone tool discoveries that had suggested modern people were in Europe more than 40,000 years ago and confirm that modern people overlapped in Europe with Neanderthals, for an extended period. Scientists have long pondered the and origin of the baby teeth found in the Grotta del Cavallo. Many thought they were more likely to be Neanderthal remains. It is only with the application of the very latest analytical techniques that the specimens' true status can be established.

Dr Stefano Benazzi and colleagues performed a morphological analysis, comparing the features of their specimens with a wide database of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal remains. This approach indicated the Grotta del Cavallo specimens were from a modern person. The Benazzi team also resorted to advanced radio-carbon dating technology to reassess the age. This was applied to ornamental shell beads found in the same layer as the teeth. "The new dating shows that the teeth must be between 43,000 and 45,000 years ago," said Dr Benazzi from the University of Vienna, Austria. "That makes them the oldest European modern-human currently known," he told BBC News.

Modern Humans in Bulgaria 45,000 Years Ago

In May 2020, in papers published in Nature and in Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists announced the discovery of a single tooth, a molar, from a modern human — dated to between 44,000 and 46,000 years ago — in Bulgaria’s labyrinthine Bacho Kiro cave, along with a few other human bones, stone and bone tools, pendants made from cave bear teeth, [Source: Tom Metcalfe, NBC News, May 12, 2020]

Tom Metcalfe wrote for NBC News: “The finds also resolve a debate about distinctive tools and personal ornaments known as Bachokirian, after the cave. These show new ways of using stone, bone and antler that became common among Homo sapiens many thousands of years later. “Similar items made by Neanderthals have been found elsewhere. But the new finds indicate those Neanderthals adopted the new ways of making them from early Homo sapiens.

“Evidence from other sites suggests the people at Bacho Kiro cave were part of a “pioneer” wave of Homo sapiens that entered southern and central Europe up to 47,000 years ago from southwest Asia, Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig in Germany, who led the team. said. Their arrival was up to 8,000 years earlier than a wave of Homo sapiens that eventually spread across western Europe, and replaced the last Neanderthals about 39,000 years ago.Homo sapiens also replaced other groups of early humans, such as the Denisovans who had populated much of Asia, at around the same time, he said. “This is one of the most important periods of human evolution,” Hublin said. “This is when hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans were replaced by modern humans.”

“Hublin’s team has worked at Bacho Kiro cave since 2015. Parts of the vast limestone cave were opened to tourists in the 19th century and some archaeological work was done there in the 1930s and the 1970s. It is now one of Bulgaria’s most famous tourist caverns. For the latest work, Hublin and his team broke down walls near the entrance built to keep tourists on the path. The bones and artifacts they found were carefully dated with radiocarbon analysis, which measures how their carbon isotopes decay — giving the team vital information missing from the earlier excavations. The radiocarbon dates closely match the dates calculated by Hublin’s team from the genetic material, or DNA, extracted from the human bones. Before this, the oldest confirmed find of Homo sapiens remains in Europe were from Peştera cu Oase in Romania, and dated to around 41,000 years ago.

Early human sites in Europe

Modern Humans in Germany 45,000 Years Ago

Modern humans ventured into northern Europe 45,000 years ago, scientists reported in early 2024 in three separate papers in Nature and Nature Ecology and Evolution. In the study, the team re-excavated a cave site in Ranis, a small town in Thuringia, Germany, first explored by archaeologists between 1932 and 1938. During the re-excavation between 2016 to 2022 human fossils were found for the first time. The scientists theorized early modern humans at that time moved in small groups, sharing their surroundings with large carnivores, like cave hyenas and cave bears.[Source: Nilima Marshall, PA Media, February 1, 2024]

The international team of researchers found human bones and tools hiding behind a massive rock — the oldest traces of Homo sapiens ever discovered so far north. The tools and bones also provided insights into questions that have plagued scientists for decades. Juliette Collen of AFP wrote:. Particularly puzzling have been tools from what has been called the "Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician" (LRJ) culture found at several sites north of the Alps, including in England and Poland. [Source: Juliette Collen, AFP, February 1, 2024]

The 1930s excavations at Ranis had not been able to get past a nearly two-meter (six foot) rock blocking the way. But this time, the scientists managed to remove it by hand. "We had to descend eight meters (26 feet) underground and board up the walls to protect the excavators," said French paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. They were rewarded with the leaf-shaped stone blades seen at other LRJ sites, as well as thousands of bone fragments.

The team used a new technique called paleoproteomics, which involves extracting proteins from fossils, to determine which bones were from animals and which from humans. Using radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis, they confirmed that the cave contained the skeletal remains of 13 humans. That means that the stone tools in the cave — which were once thought to have been made by Neanderthals — were in fact crafted by humans as early as 47,500 years ago. "This came as a huge surprise, as no human fossils were known from the LRJ before, and was a reward for the hard work at the site," said study co-author Marcel Weiss. The fossils date from around the time when the first Homo sapiens were leaving Africa for Europe and Asia.

Modern Humans in England 41,000 Years Ago

The earliest evidence of modern humans in United Kingdom is a jaw fragment found in Kents Cavern in Torquay, Devon in 1927. Careful dating reported in an article in the journal Nature suggests it is more than 41,000 years old. [Sources: Jonathan Amos, BBC News, November 2, 2011; Wikipedia]

Jonathan Amos of BBC News wrote: What's significant about this work is that it increases the overlap and contemporaneity with Neanderthals," explained Dr Tom Higham, from Oxford University, who led the study. "We estimate that probably three to five thousand years of time is the amount of the overlap between moderns and Neanderthals in this part of the world," he told the BBC Science in Action programme. “The new results indicate, too, that modern humans swept across Europe via a number of different routes, as they populated the world after leaving Africa some 60,000 years ago.

““The team also re-examined the shape of the jaw's three teeth, including their internal structure, to remove doubts that the jaw could be Neanderthal. "We've done a new reconstruction, and we've actually found that one of the teeth was in the wrong place. That's for starters," said co-author Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum. “"But we've also done a really detailed comparison, right down to the shape of the roots and internal pulp cavities. We've gone to microscopic details to show this really is a modern human. You would never find a Neanderthal fossil that had this many modern human features."

Because of their concerns about modern contamination in the jaw, Higham and colleagues went back to animal fossils found above and below the object in the Torquay cave and re-dated those with greater precision. This produced a likely age for the human remains of between 41,000 and 44,200 years ago. “The re-assessments have further importance because palaeoanthropologists can now put modern humans in the caves at the same time as the stone and bone tool technologies discovered there. “There has been some doubt over who created the so-called Aurignacian artefacts at Kents Cavern and the slightly older Uluzzian technologies at Grotta del Cavallo. It could have been Neanderthals, but there is now an obvious association in time with Homo sapiens.

Modern Humans in Romania 40,000 Years Ago

Earliest evidence of modern humans in Romania were found in Pe tera cu Oase. Bones dated to 38,000 to 42,000 years ago are among the oldest human remains found in Europe. They were once regarded as THE oldest. Pestera cu Oase is a cave in the southwestern Carpathian mountains in Romania. Fossils from several individuals have been found there. Fossils for one individual — a jaw and part of skull found in 2002 and announced in September 2003 — has a somewhat primitive jaw bone and large developed molars, leading some scientists to speculate the fossils had come from a cross breed between modern humans and Neanderthal man.

Peteracu Oase skull from Romania

Peteracu Oase (meaning "The Cave with Bones") is a system of 12 karstic galleries and chambers located near the city Anina, in the Cara -Severin county, southwestern Romania, where some of the oldest European early modern human (EEMH) remains, between 37,000 42,000 years old, have been found. In 2015 genetics research revealed that the Oase 1 fossil had a recent Neanderthal ancestor, with an estimated 5-11 percent Neanderthal autosomal DNA. The specimen's 12th chromosome was also 50 percent Neanderthal. [Source: Wikipedia +]

In February 2002, a speleological team exploring the karstic system of Mini Valley, in the southwestern Carpathian Mountains near Anina, revealed a previously unknown chamber with a profusion of mammalian skeletal remains. The cave, which seemed to have served primarily as hibernation room for the Late Pleistocene cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), presented unusual arrangements such as the placement of some remains on raised rocks, suggesting a certain human involvement in the accumulated deposits. Speleologists Stefan Milota, Adrian Bîlgăr and Lauren iu Sarcina discovered a complete human mandible on the paleosurface. The karstic chamber was designated as "Pe tera cu Oase" (The Cave with Bones) and the human mandible as "Oase 1",. The latest radiocarbon dates of the Oase fossils give an age of 37,800 years before present. +

"Oase 1" is the lower jaw of fully mature male. It exhibits morphological traits from early modern humans and archaic humans, including Neanderthal features. DNA analysis of Oase 1 since 2015 has revealed a number of significant findings. About 6-9% of the genome is Neanderthal in origin. This is the highest percentage of archaic introgression found in an anatomically modern human and together with the linkage disequilibrium patterns indicates that Oase 1 had a relatively-recent Neanderthal ancestor – about four to six generations earlier. The autosomal DNA of Oase 1 by Fu et al. (2015) indicates that he may have shared more alleles with modern East Asian populations than with modern Europeans. However, Oase shared equal alleles with Mesolithic Europeans and East Eurasians suggesting non pre LGM-European admixture in modern Europeans. +

"Oase 2" is the facial skeleton of an adolescent. "Oase 3" is the left temporal bone of an adolescent or versus mature female, designated as "Oase 3". Additional finds and work have shown that the temporal bone derives from the same cranium as the "Oase 2" facial and parietal bones. The "Oase 2" and "Oase 3" confirm a pattern already known from the probably contemporaneous "Oase 1" mandible, indicating a mixture of archaic, early modern human and Neanderthal morphological features. Thus, the specimens exhibit a suite of derived "modern human" features like projecting chin, no brow ridge, a high and rounded brain case. Yet, these features are associated with several archaic aspects of the cranium and dentition that place them outside the range of variation for modern humans, like a large face, a large crest of bone behind the ear and big teeth that get even larger toward the back. This mosaic of Neanderthal and modern human resembles similar traits found in a 25,000 years old fossil of a child in Abrigo do Lagar Velho or in the 31,000 years old site of Mladeč, by Cidália Duarte, et al. (1999). +

Modern Humans in Russia

In a January 2007 article in Science, scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Colorado, reported that they found human teeth, tools, carved ivory and other artifacts, dated to 40,000 to 42,000 years ago, at an archaeological site on the Dom River 400 kilometers south of Moscow. This finding shows that early modern humans migrated further north than previously thought.

Scientists have determined that modern humans settled in Crimea around 37,000 years ago, a 2023 study in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found. According to Live Science: Researchers sequenced the DNA of two male skeletons that were radiocarbon-dated to about 35,800 to 37,500 years ago. This revealed that the descendants of these individuals gave rise to a people who carved Venus figures, stone tools and jewelry about 7,000 years later. "Our study adds a fundamental piece to the jigsaw of the peopling of Europe by anatomically modern humans," study author Eva-Maria Geigl, research director at the Institute Jacques Monod in Paris, told Live Science. [Source: Live Science, December 28, 2023]

According to Archaeology magazine: Our ancient ancestors sometimes traveled thousands of miles and braved harsh climates to secure essential resources. They even stalked woolly mammoths hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. Cut marks on the bones of a mammoth on Kotelny Island indicate that a hunting party caught and butchered the beast with stone tools 26,000 years ago. This makes Kotelny the northernmost Paleolithic site ever recorded. Today the island lies 150 miles off the Siberian coast, but at the time it was connected to the mainland. [Source: Archaeology magazine, January 2022]

Humans in the Arctic 45,000 Years Ago?

In 2016, scientists announced the results of radiocarbon dating of well-preserved remains of a mammoth found by an 11-year-old boy in 2012. According to Archaeology magazine the skeleton is studded with signs of a prolonged battle with a group of humans, and dates to about 45,000 years ago, placing humans in the Arctic more than 10,000 years earlier than previous evidence suggested. In fact, the researchers believe that innovations in mammoth hunting made this northern occupation possible. [Source: Samir S. Patel, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2016]

Ann Gibbons wrote in Science: “In August of 2012, an 11-year-old boy made a gruesome discovery in a frozen bluff overlooking the Arctic Ocean. While exploring the foggy coast of Yenisei Bay, about 2000 kilometers south of the North Pole, he came upon the leg bones of a woolly mammoth eroding out of frozen sediments. Scientists excavating the well-preserved creature determined that it had been killed by humans: Its eye sockets, ribs, and jaw had been battered, apparently by spears, and one spear-point had left a dent in its cheekbone—perhaps a missed blow aimed at the base of its trunk. [Source: Ann Gibbons, Science, January 14, 2016 ^]

“Most researchers had long thought that big-game hunters, who left a trail of stone tools around the Arctic 12,500 years ago, were the first to reach the Arctic Circle. These cold-adapted hunters apparently traversed Siberia and the Bering Straits at least 15,000 years ago (and new dates suggest humans may have been in the Americas as early as 18,500 years ago). But in 2004, researchers pushed that date further back in time when they discovered beads and stone and bone tools dated to as much as 35,000 years old at several sites in the Ural Mountains of far northeastern Europe and in northern Siberia; they also found the butchered carcasses of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, and other animals. The Russian boy’s discovery—of the best-preserved mammoth found in a century—pushes back those dates by another 10,000 years. A team led by archaeologist Alexei Tikhonov excavated the mammoth and dubbed it “Zhenya,” for the child, Evgeniy Solinder, whose nickname was Zhenya. ^

“The big surprise, though, is the age. Radiocarbon dates on the collagen from the mammoth’s tibia bone, as well as from hair and muscle tissue, produce a direct date of 45,000 years, the team reports online today in Science. This fits with dating of the layer of sediments above the carcass, which suggest it was older than 40,000 years. If correct, this means the mammoth was alive during the heyday of woolly mammoths 42,000 to 44,000 years ago when they roamed the vast open grasslands of the northern steppe of the Siberian Arctic, Pitulko says. Researchers also have dated a thighbone of a modern human to 45,000 years at Ust-Ishim in Siberia, although that was found south of the Arctic at a latitude of 57° north, a bit north (and east) of Moscow. “The dating is compelling. It’s likely older than 40,000,” says Douglas Kennett, an environmental archaeologist who is co-director of the Pennsylvania State University, University Park’s accelerator mass spectrometry facility. However, he would like the Russian team to report the method used to rule out contamination of the bone collagen for dating—and confirmation of the dates on the bone by another lab, because the date is so critical for the significance of this discovery. ^

“Mammoths and other large animals, such as woolly rhinoceros and reindeer, may have been the magnet that drew humans to the Far North. “Mammoth hunting was an important part of survival strategy, not only in terms of food, but in terms of important raw materials—tusks, ivory that they desperately needed to manufacture hunting equipment,” Pitulko says. The presence of humans in the Arctic this early also suggests they had the adaptive ability to make tools, warm clothes, and temporary shelters that allowed them to live in the frigid north earlier than thought. They had to adapt to the cold to traverse Siberia and Beringia on their way to the Bering Strait’s land bridge, which they crossed to enter the Americas. “Surviving at those latitudes requires highly specialized technology and extreme cooperation,” Marean agrees. That implies that these were modern humans, rather than Neandertals or other early members of the human family. “If these hunters could survive in the Arctic Circle 45,000 years ago, they could have lived virtually anywhere on Earth,” says Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University, College Station.” ^

The find also indicates that early Siberians were 4,660 kilometers (2,895 miles) from what was then a land bridge between modern Russia and Alaska. According to the Siberian Times: “A long distance, for sure, but far from insurmountable, opening the possibility that Stone Age Siberians colonised the Americas at this early point.” [Source: Anna Liesowska siberiantimes.com May 30, 2016]

Modern Humans in Greece 210,000 Years Ago?

In 2019, a modern human skull found in Greece was dated to be 210,000 years — a stunning date making it by far the s the oldest Homo sapiens fossil found in Europe and outside Africa. Ed Yong wrote in The Atlantic: In 1978, in a cave called Apidima at the southern end of Greece, a group of anthropologists found a pair of human-like skulls. One had a face, but was badly distorted; the other was just the left half of a braincase. Researchers guessed that they might be Neanderthals, or perhaps another ancient hominin. And since they were entombed together, in a block of stone no bigger than a microwave, “it was always assumed that they were the same [species] and came from the same time period,” says Katerina Harvati from Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. [Source: Ed Yong, The Atlantic, July 10, 2019]

“That’s wrong. By thoroughly analyzing both skulls using modern techniques, Harvati and her colleagues have shown that they are very different, in both age and identity. “The one with the face, known as Apidima 2, is a 170,000-year-old Neanderthal — no surprises there. But the other, Apidima 1, was one of us — a 210,000-year-old modern human. And if the team is right about that, the partial skull is the oldest specimen of Homo sapiens outside Africa, handily beating the previous record holder, a jawbone from Israel’s Misliya Cave that’s about 180,000 years old. “I couldn’t believe it at first,” Harvati says, “but all the analyses we conducted gave the same result.”

“Until now, most researchers have focused on the more complete (but less interesting) of the two skulls. “Apidima 1 has just been ignored,” says Harvati. But its antiquity matters for three reasons. First, it pushes back the known presence of modern humans outside Africa by some 30,000 years. Second, it’s considerably older than all other Homo sapiens fossils from Europe... Third, it’s older than the Neanderthal skull next to it.

“Harvati’s team estimated their ages by analyzing the minute amounts of uranium within them. They then scanned both skulls, reconstructed what they would have looked like before being broken and distorted, and compared their three-dimensional shapes with those of other hominins. In that comparison, Apidima 2 clearly clustered with Neanderthals, while Apidima 1 grouped with skulls from modern humans.

“How much information can scientists really glean from just the back of the skull, and just the left half at that? Actually, quite a lot, Harvati says: That region is very informative when telling different hominins apart. Apidima 1 lacks several traits that are distinctively Neanderthal, while its rounded shape “is considered to be a uniquely modern human feature that evolved relatively late,” Harvati says. “But “it doesn’t look like classic Homo sapiens,” says Rebecca Wragg Sykes, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, who wonders whether it represents a group of humans that had been interbreeding with Neanderthals or other ancient hominins. “Obviously everyone is going to want to see DNA out of that skull,” she adds.

The team’s analysis “is convincing,” and its study is one of several that have recently shaken our understanding of human evolution, says Mina Weinstein-Evron from the University of Haifa. Finds like 300,000-year-old bones from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco suggest that our species arose from several diverse populations that lived across Africa. Meanwhile, bones from Misliya and Apidima tell us that early humans then expanded into other continents, and interacted with other hominins, far earlier than previously thought.

Implications of Modern Humans in Greece 210,000 Years Ago

Ed Yong wrote in The Atlantic: The 210,000-year-old modern human skull messes “up the standard story of Neanderthal and modern-human evolution. According to that narrative, Neanderthals slowly evolved in Europe, largely isolated from other kinds of hominins. When modern humans expanded out of Africa, their movements into Europe might have been stalled by the presence of the already successful Neanderthals. That explains why Homo sapiens stuck to a more southerly route into Asia, and why they left no European fossils until about 40,000 years ago. “The idea of Europe as ‘fortress Neanderthal’ has been gaining ground,” says Wragg Sykes, but identifying a 210,000-year-old Homo sapiens skull from Europe “really undermines that.” “It suggests that early Homo sapiens groups got farther than we may have previously thought, occasionally occupying territories that later became that of Neanderthals,” adds Shara Bailey, an anthropologist at NYU. “Findings like this are very important for informing us on the evolution of our species.” [Source: Ed Yong, The Atlantic, July 10, 2019]

The identity of Apidima 1 could also cast doubt on other archaeological finds from Europe, such as stone tools with no accompanying fossils. Researchers had long assumed that within a certain time window, “any archaeology was all the work of Neanderthals,” says Wragg Sykes. But if modern humans also occupied this “safe range,” which species actually created those artifacts? These interpretations depend on the dating of the Apidima skulls, which has always been difficult. They were found in an odd place — a small niche near the cave ceiling, separated from any sediments that could have been easily dated. They were also entombed in breccia, a composite rock made from fragments that have been cemented together. It seems that, as ice ages came and went and sea levels rose and fell, parts of the cave’s interior were flooded and eroded, and both skulls were dislodged from their original resting places. They fell into a cavity and got stuck.

“The Apidima skulls also suggest that the accepted story of Europe, in which modern humans eventually replaced the long-dominant Neanderthals, is too simple. Instead, Harvati thinks that modern humans were already in Greece about 200,000 years ago; they were then replaced by Neanderthals, who were themselves replaced by humans about 40,000 years ago. A similar cycle of competition, where Neanderthals and humans repeatedly replaced each other, seems to have happened in the Levant, the Middle Eastern region that includes Israel and Syria. “We can’t refer to Homo sapiens as a ‘success’ in terms of being able to move into new areas and stay there,” Wragg Sykes says.

“Of course, it’s possible that both hominins just lived together. But genetic studies suggest that while they did intermittently meet and mate, the groups weren’t in constant contact. “I don’t think they coexisted,” says Harvati. “But maybe I’m wrong. We don’t have the evidence one way or the other, and we need to look for more.”

Greece is a good place to start. “It’s at the crossroads of three major continents, and it’s a refuge where animals and humans could survive at the height of the ice ages,” Harvati says. “You’d predict population dispersals and range contractions in these areas, the possibility for contact [between different groups], and a more diverse human-fossil record than you’d find in distant parts of Europe. There aren’t many fossils in the region, but it hasn’t been much of a research priority.”

Genetic Study Uncovers Unknown Lineage of Ice Age Europeans

A previously unknown lineage of Europeans — dubbed the Věstonice— survived the periods of the last ice age, only to disappear when Europe went through a warm spell beginning about 15,000 years ago according to the largest study yet, published March 1, 2023 in the journal Nature, to look at the genetics of ice age hunter-gatherers in Europe. In the study, scientists analyzed the genomes of 356 ancient hunter-gatherers who lived between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago in what are now 34 countries across Eurasia. This included new data from 116 individuals.[Source: Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, March 2, 2023]

Charles Q. Choi wrote in Live Science: The researchers unexpectedly discovered that the Gravettian culture that was widespread across Europe between about 33,000 and 26,000 years ago was made up of two genetically distinct groups, despite using similar weapons and producing similar art. That was a surprise, study lead author Cosimo Posth, a paleogeneticist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, told Live Science.

The previously unknown Gravettian lineage — dubbed Fournol, after a French site that is the earliest known location associated with this genetic cluster — inhabited what is now France and Spain. Another — named Věstonice after a Czech site — stretched across today's Czech Republic and Italy. The Fournol genetic signature survived the Last Glacial Maximum, lasting for at least 20,000 years. Their descendants sought refuge in what is now Spain and southern France during the Last Glacial Maximum and later spread northeast to the rest of Europe. In contrast, the Věstonice died out. Previously, scientists thought the Italian peninsula was a refuge for Gravettians during the Last Glacial Maximum, with the people there eventually forming the so-called Epigravettian culture after the glaciers retreated. However, the new findings show the Věstonice were not genetically detectable after the Last Glacial Maximum.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024