Scientists analyzed fossil DNA from Spanish Andalusia. In this respect informs Press service of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The Iberian Peninsula plays an important role in the reconstruction of human history. On the one hand, it’s a geographical cul-de-sac, with extreme temperature fluctuations considered a shelter during the last ice age. On the other hand, this region could be one of the starting points for the recolonization of Europe after the glacial maximum.
Now, Vanessa Villalba-Muco and her colleagues have analyzed a 23,000-year-old DNA sample found at Cueva del Malalmuerzo in southern Spain. It was extracted from two human teeth found during archaeological excavations in a cave. Further research showed that both belonged to the same person whose life fell at the maximum of the last glaciation (26.5-19 thousand years ago).
The genetic origins of people from Central and Southern Europe who lived before the Last Glacial Maximum are different from those who later recolonized Europe. At the same time, the situation in Western Europe was uncertain due to the lack of genetic samples from important periods. Now it has been possible to find out that at least some of the inhabitants of the southern Iberian Peninsula are relatives of representatives of the Aurignacian culture, whose genetic material was found in Belgium for 35 thousand years.
“Due to the high quality of our data, we were able to detect traces of one of the first genetic lineages that settled in Eurasia 45,000 years ago. It’s important to note that we found genetic similarity with a 35,000-year-old man from Belgium, scientists said.
The man from Cueva del Malalmuerzo is associated not only with earlier settlement periods, but also with hunter-gatherers of southern and western Europe who lived well after the last ice age. It also confirms the important role of the Iberian Peninsula as a shelter for humans during the last glacial maximum. From there, as soon as the ice sheets receded, people migrated north and east.
ancient scientists to solvethat hunter-gatherers from southern Europe were driven north by the first farmers from Anatolia.