A brand-new study takes a look at the early migration of humans to Europe, concentrating on a research study of 36,000-year-old skull pieces from Crimea. These findings connect these early settlers to the Gravettian culture, showing their considerable function in shaping early European civilization.
Before the long-term settlement of contemporary human beings in Europe, other human populations moved from Africa to Europe around 60,000 years ago. They did not develop long-lasting settlements. Around 40,000 years earlier, a considerable climate crisis, along with a super-eruption from the Phlegraean Fields volcanic region near contemporary Naples, caused a decline in the early European populations.
Skull fragment discovered at Buran Kaya III in Crimea, coming from a specific dating back to roughly 37,000 years back. Credit: Eva-Maria Geigl/IJM/CNRS
Discovering Europes First Modern Human Settlers
To determine who the first modern humans to settle definitively in Europe were, a group led by CNRS scientists evaluated the genome of 2 skull pieces from the Buran Kaya III site in Crimea dating to 36,000 and 37,000 years earlier. By comparing them to DNA series from human genome databases, they revealed the genetic proximity between these individuals and both ancient and current Europeans, particularly those connected with the Gravettian culture, understood for producing female figurines referred to as “Venuses”, whose apogee in Europe came between 31,000 and 23,000 years back.
Connection to Gravettian Culture
The stone tools discovered at Buran Kaya III likewise look like some Gravettian assemblages. The individuals studied here therefore contributed both genetically and technologically to the population that triggered this civilisation around 5,000 years later on. This research study, which was published in Nature Ecology & & Evolution on 23 October, documents the very first arrival of the ancestors of Europeans.
Reference: “Genome series of 36,000- to 37,000-year-old modern human beings at Buran-Kaya III in Crimea” by E. Andrew Bennett, Oğuzhan Parasayan, Sandrine Prat, Stéphane Péan, Laurent Crépin, Alexandr Yanevich, Thierry Grange and Eva-Maria Geigl, 23 October 2023, Nature Ecology & & Evolution.DOI: 10.1038/ s41559-023-02211-9.
