The Europe of the last ice age is finally revealed not only in fascinating fiction about the life of a "prehistoric boy" and detailed descriptions of individual sites, cultures and industries. A huge team of scientists from the USA, Europe and Russia presented the most ambitious study of the "history" of Europe in the Paleolithic period to date - if by history we mean the real processes of migration and mixing of populations on a European scale. It is not difficult to assume that genes have become the source of objective information about the unwritten past of the extinct peoples of the continent.
Among mammoths and rhinos
The end of the last glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch (which began about 110 thousand years ago) began 26 thousand years ago. Then, during the last glacial maximum, almost all of North America, northern Europe (up to the Alps!) Was covered with a continuous layer of glaciers. Only 12-10 thousand years ago, simultaneously with the beginning of the modern geological era (Holocene) and the transition to agriculture (Neolithic revolution), the Alleredic warming occurs - and until today the glaciers are only melting and retreating.
The fauna of the Eurasian tundra-steppes adjoining the glaciers was made up of mammoths, ancient horses, woolly rhinos, bison, yaks, deer, cave lions, bears and hyenas, giant hippos, and various rodents. From the point of view of history, the main event of the European Pleistocene is the change of the Neanderthal population (Mousterian culture) by people of the modern type, who most likely came from the Middle East. Scientists are actively arguing about the reasons for the disappearance of Neanderthals (climate, new diseases, retreat before people). Recently, these discussions have been supplemented by studies on the nature of contacts between the two species of man, as well as on the fate of Neanderthal genes in modern mankind.
However, the authors of this study (which included the main experts on Stone Age Eurasia - Swede Svante Paabo and American David Reich) begin counting from the 43rd millennium BC, with the arrival of modern-day people in Europe. Their goal is to link climatic shifts and the change of material cultures (Kostenkovskaya, Aurignacian, Gravettian) known to archaeologists with the movement of the population of Europe. To do this, scientists took the DNA of the remains of 51 ancient people (a record number for this kind of research) found in the vastness of Eurasia - from the Spanish El Miron cave and the Belgian Goye cave to the Afontova Gora sites near Krasnoyarsk and Malta near Lake Baikal. DNA extracts from bones in sterile rooms were processed using the Illumina / Solexa method. Scientists have taken special measuresto prevent contamination of the material with modern DNA.
Maximum glaciation
Promotional video:
Photo: Ittiz / Wikipedia
How Europe was populated
First, scientists have found that the amount of Neanderthal genetic material in human DNA becomes less and less over time. In the genomes of modern Eurasians, it is about two percent, whereas 45 thousand years ago, the share of Neanderthal genes reached 4.3-5.7 percent. Scientists explain this decline not by interbreeding with other groups of people (more "free" from Neanderthal "blood"), but by natural selection: the genes of Neanderthals, apparently, led to disturbances in the mental and physical development of people and over time "washed out" from the population.
A similar conclusion was reached by other scientists who studied the admixture of genes of Neanderthals and Denisovans (another archaic species of Homo) in modern humans. On the one hand, alien genes help to survive: the genes inherited from the ancient hominins are responsible for adaptability to life at high altitudes in Tibetans, and the population of Papua New Guinea received an improved sense of touch from them. At the same time, part of the Neanderthal genes affect the work of the male reproductive glands. This probably partly explains the decreased fertility of men - the descendants of those who were born from connections between widely different groups of Homo.
Three skulls from the Upper Paleolithic site of Dolni Vestonice (29 thousand years BC)
Photo: Martin Frouz and Jiri Svoboda
Further, geneticists learned about unexpectedly ancient ties between the east and west of Eurasia. Thus, the haplogroup R1b, which was previously considered to have been brought to Europe by migrations of the steppe population of the Caspian steppes in the Bronze Age, was found in individuals from Villabruna (Italy, 14 thousand years ago) and in an Iberian farmer (seven thousand years ago). The locus HERC2, which is responsible for the light eye color in Europeans, appears simultaneously in Italy and the Caucasus (14-13 thousand years ago). Haplogroup M (mitochondrial DNA) was found in a resident of southern Italy (Ostuni) aged 27 thousand years: this haplogroup, now found only in Asia, was also observed in Europe until the last maximum of icing, but later its carriers disappeared.
Scientists also found Homo sapiens (individuals from Ust-Ishim and Peshtera-ku-Oase), who came to Europe very early (40 thousand years ago), but did not leave their mark in the genes of modern Europeans. Only from the 35th millennium BC all examined individuals can be confidently ranked among the ancestors of Europeans. At the same time, there is no similarity with people from Malta, and the common features (Paleolithic Venus) must be explained not by population migrations, but by trans-Eurasian cultural exchange.
Bolling Allered International
Finally, geneticists have been able to link archaeological cultures to specific migrations. The Madeleine culture testifies to the expansion of the population from the refugia of South-Western Europe after some retreat of glaciers about 19 thousand years ago. The genetic ties of Europeans with the inhabitants of the Middle East, starting from the 12th millennium BC, coincide in time with the Belling warming - the first after the maximum of glaciation. At the same time, the Epigravetian and Azilian cultures appeared. Geneticists are confident that in that era, groups of people hiding from glaciation on the "islets" of the Balkans and Western Asia began to actively populate Europe. Scientists were intrigued by the common genes with the inhabitants of East Asia (China) in the same period (14 thousand years ago), but they left the clarification of the historical reasons for this strange connection to a new generation of researchers.
Artem Kosmarsky