Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Peking University discovered that hunter-gatherers from southern Europe were driven north by the first farmers from Anatolia. The research was published in the journal Nature.
Anthropologists analyzed DNA samples from 356 hunter-gatherers from different archaeological cultures collected in 14 countries in Europe and Central Asia. The study focused on people who lived between 5,000 and 35,000 years ago. At least in part, they were the ancestors of the modern population of Western Eurasia.
The scientists found that populations from different regions associated with the Gravettian culture prevalent on the European continent were not genetically closely related. Despite this, they used the same weapons and produced similar works.
About 25,000 years ago, the ice age began. The study directly confirmed, for the first time, the hypothesis that humans have found relief from the cold in what is now more favorable southwestern Europe. Previously, the Italian peninsula was considered one of the refuges from the Ice Age. However, new results disprove this hypothesis. It seems that in Central and Southern Europe, after the ice age, a new gene pool of non-Gravettian people settled. Presumably, these people came from the Balkans.
In addition, scientists have found that genetic exchange between hunter-gatherer populations in Western and Eastern Europe began only eight thousand years ago. Prior to this, populations differed significantly in many respects, including skin and eye color. Around the same time, agriculture began to spread from Anatolia (part of modern Turkey) to Europe, pushing hunter-gatherers to the north of Europe.