DNA extracted from the bones of over 350 people who lived tens of thousands of years ago has revealed previously unknown chapters of European prehistory. The new data identify the hunter-gatherer groups that lived before and after one of the continent’s worst catastrophes – the Last Glacial Maximum – when the ice sheets were at their greatest extent 19,000 to 25,000 years ago.
Ice covered large parts of the largely uninhabitable continent during this period. Scientists believe that 100,000 people lived in Western and Central Europe before the Great Frost. The arrival of the ice and the accompanying drop in temperature decimated the human population, leaving only small isolated groups of around 50 people. For the ancient Europeans it was an almost apocalyptic event.
A recent study in Nature presents new genetic data from 116 people from 14 countries. The study covers the arrival of the first Homo sapiens in Europe (about 45,000 years ago) to about 3,200 BC. BC, when people across the continent became accustomed to agricultural ways of life. This change enabled civilization to flourish and ended the nomadic lifestyle unique to our species.
The first wave of Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe from Africa encountered the Neanderthals, the continent’s native human species. They interbred with Neanderthals and gave birth to children, but mysteriously died out without leaving any genetic traces in modern-day Europeans. The Neanderthals also disappeared for unknown reasons about 40,000 years ago, but left a few drops of DNA with modern-day humans outside of Africa.
The new study shows that before the glaciation, Europe was divided into two main lineages of Homo sapiens, descended from successive waves of migration. Groups with ancestors from western Russia lived in present-day Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic. Spain and France were dominated by other groups whose roots stretch back at least 35,000 years to what is now Belgium.
shelter in the south
Scientists previously thought that people migrated south en masse when the glaciation began. The Pyrenees and Alps acted as ice barriers, protecting people already inhabiting the Iberian and Italian peninsulas and preventing others from migrating south. Genetic data now shows that the human population in Italy is completely extinct.
“It’s a brutal fact,” says Vanessa Villalba-Mouco, a Spanish molecular biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. Villalba-Mouco, co-author of the study, adds: “The population has been completely replaced and we still don’t know why that happened.”
Male skull and stone tools from Groß Fredenwalde (Germany), dated 7,000 years ago.Volker Minkus
Another study recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution analyzed the remains of one of the only known survivors of the glaciation. Archaeologists have found a single adult male tooth in the Malalmuerzo Cave in Granada, southern Spain, beneath walls decorated with paintings of horses. The whiteness and health of their teeth were distinctive traits of these Europeans, since foods that cause tooth decay, such as sweets and bread, had not yet been invented.
Analysis of these remains shows that this man lived 23,000 years ago and survived the worst of the last Ice Age. DNA indicates he was related to the hunter-gatherers who lived before the cold came. More importantly, its genetic heritage survived the Ice Age and is still present in modern-day Europeans, although significantly diluted after millennia of mixing and remixing. The remains of two other Ice Age survivors have been found in northern Spain and southern France.
“This work confirms that the Iberian Peninsula and southern France were the only known refuges for survivors of the last Ice Age,” says geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox, co-author of this second study with Villalba-Mouco. “We already knew from the remains excavated in the Iberian Peninsula that this is the only living area for many animals such as brown bears, hedgehogs, shrews and tree species including oaks. Today we know that it allowed the Europeans of that time to survive.”
Elegant prehistoric art
The tooth found in the Malalmuerzo Cave provided the genetics associated with the Solutrean culture. It is known for its advanced tool manufacture, spearheads and arrows, as well as artistic depictions of animals and other uniquely European scenes. Genetic analysis revealed that this culture descended from earlier European Homo sapiens – the Aurignacian culture – who created some of the earliest and most elegant prehistoric works of art, such as the cats in France’s Chauvet Cave.
The study confirmed the lack of contact between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, even though glaciation had narrowed the Strait of Gibraltar. After the last glacial maximum, the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula abandoned their refuge and began to populate the rest of Europe. By this time a new human lineage had emerged with roots in the Balkans and the Anatolian Peninsula of Turkey. They quickly repopulated Italy and spread across the rest of the continent until they became the new dominant lineage in Europe, the Magdalenian culture known for its prehistoric cave paintings such as the Altamira bison in northern Spain.
About 9,000 years ago, a new human upheaval occurred in Europe when migrants from Mesopotamia brought with them agriculture, animal husbandry, and a sedentary lifestyle. Many nomadic hunter tribes mingled with the new immigrants and adopted their way of life. Others clung to their nomadic traditions, surviving in smaller, isolated groups. DNA reconstructions illustrate the physical characteristics of the nomads who lived less than 14,000 years ago. Those in southern Europe had dark skin and blue eyes, while those in the north were fair-skinned and dark-eyed.
Roberto Risch, prehistorian from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, points out the importance of these two new studies, which offer glimpses of a time without written evidence through stone tools, vessels, paintings and human remains. Advances in DNA analysis allow us to disprove theories and confirm others. “Most importantly, these studies show us that the people of that time were basically like us. Faced with climate change happening rapidly in a single generation, the way some groups responded and made social decisions determined their fate. Those who chose to stay there and deny what happened are gone,” Risch said.
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