An international team of researchers conducted a genetic analysis of hunter-gatherers who lived on
For their work, scientists collected DNA samples from 356prehistoric hunter-gatherers from various archaeological cultures, including 116 previously unexplored. Among them, for the first time, the genomes of “Europeans” were presented, who lived during the Maximum of the last glaciation (about 25 thousand years ago) - the most severe cooling of the last Ice Age.
Researchers found a lack of geneticlinks between populations from different regions associated with the Gravettian culture, common on the European continent between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago. They used the same weapons and produced the same household items and art, but were not related.
The analysis showed that only in the Iberianpeninsula, there is a connection between the “Europeans” who existed before and after the Ice Age. Representatives of the Western Gravettian culture apparently survived the cold snap by hiding in the relatively warm regions of modern Spain.
On the contrary, the inhabitants of Eastern and Southern Europe(modern Czech Republic and Italy) could not survive the cold snap: traces of their genome are lost. The new inhabitants who settled this territory after the Ice Age are genetically different: researchers believe that they moved from Asia through the territory of the Balkan Peninsula, gradually spread to northern Italy, and about 14,000 years ago, after warming, to Central Europe.
The results of the new analysis show how climate change drove hunter-gatherer migration and affected the distribution of the first humans.
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On the cover: an artistic illustration of a hunter-gatherer from the Gravettian culture. Image: Tom Bjoerklund, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig