Try, try, and try again: Why did modern humans take so long to settle in Europe? | has evolved

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Modern humans made several unsuccessful attempts to settle in Europe before finally taking over the continent. This is the stark conclusion of scientists who have been studying the migration path of Homo sapiens from Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

Researchers recently identified sites in Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic where the remains of our ancestors have been dated to be between 40,000 and 50,000 years old. However, bone analyzes have produced genetic features that are unparalleled among contemporary Europeans.

The Lost Outposts of Early Humans

Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said: “These early settlements appear to have been established by groups of early modern humans who did not survive in order to pass on their genes.” “They are the lost breeds of our species.

“The crucial point is that the demise of these early modern human settlers means that Neanderthals still occupied Europe for a few thousand years before Homo sapiens finally took over the continent.”

Modern humans first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago and slowly evolved across the continent before moving to western Asia about 60,000 years ago. Our ancestors then spread across the globe until every other hominin species on the planet became extinct, including the Denisovans in East Asia and Homo floresiensis, the “hobbit people” in Indonesia.

Neanderthals in Europe were one of the last hominin species to succumb, and they died out about 39,000 years ago. However, recent studies – which were outlined at a meeting of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution earlier this year – have shown that this takeover by Homo sapiens has not been easy. On several occasions, groups of early settlers perished while moving to the continent.

Bacho Kiro Cave, northern Bulgaria, where the remains of some of Europe’s oldest modern humans have been found. Photo: Nikolai Duchynov/Getty Images

In one study, international researchers partially re-examined the skull and skeleton of a woman found in Zlato-ku Cave in the Czech Republic. Originally thought to be 15,000 years old, this new analysis suggested it was probably at least 45,000 years old, making it one of the oldest members of Homo sapiens found in Europe. However, the study also found that it does not share genetic continuity with modern Europeans.

As one of the research team – Cosimo Posth, from the Institute of Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen, Germany – said: “This woman did not contribute genetically to current Europeans.”

Other sites where modern human remains from this period have been found include Peștera cu Oase in Romania and Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. And again, neither produced genetic features that left a big impact in Europe.

Stone artifacts, including pointed blades, found in Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria. Photograph: Tsenka Tsanova/Reuters

The discovery of these lost outposts of modern human expansion suggests that Homo sapiens spread into Europe in the form of pulsars, and raises critical questions for scientists. In particular, why did the subsequent invasions of modern humans succeed in Europe while the earlier ones failed? The impact of this success on our world has been significant, after all. Some scholars argue that environmental factors played a major role in the demise of Neanderthals. Possible triggers include a reversal in Earth’s magnetic poles that occurred about 42,000 years ago. Known as the Laschamps event, it could have increased levels of cosmic radiation across the planet for centuries.

There was also a cooling of the climate that affected the North Atlantic at this time, as well as a large volcanic eruption in the Campanian Ingembrite Caldera in central Italy. All this would put pressure on the population.

But some researchers question whether these events were devastating enough to lead to the extinction of Neanderthals. They argue that they would have posed a challenge to modern humans, but we survived.

Others have suggested that Homo sapiens was simply better at exploiting and hunting the landscape more effectively, a point supported by Stringer, who argues that small changes in human behavior at this time could have been enough to result in the accumulation of significant improvements in the lives of men and women.

I think Homo sapiens behavior was a big factor in our “success”. Perhaps we communicated better, or collected knowledge more effectively, and thus learned how to extract resources more intensively than Neanderthals did. Any slight advantage can be decisive. You just have to increase your children’s survival by 1% and that’s a huge advantage in the Stone Age world. “

However, there is another factor that has been put forward for the success of modern humanity in Europe. Genetic studies have shown that interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals occurred several times. As a result, men and women of non-African descent today have genomes that represent about 2% of Neanderthals. This number could have been much higher 40 thousand years ago.

“As Homo sapiens numbers grow and spread more widely across Europe, it is very likely that we have ‘assimilated’ some other species – in particular, Neanderthals – out of existence,” Stringer said. “If, voluntarily or otherwise, adult Neanderthals had entered the modern human reproductive basin, these individuals would no longer contribute to the survival of their species. The end result was the immediate extinction of Neanderthals—although, as a species, they still It is alive in the DNA of men and women today.”

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