Scientists from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) found that the first permanent inhabitants of Europe settled in Crimea 37 thousand years ago. The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
About 60 thousand years ago, some groups of people began to settle in Europe from Africa, but most of them were nomadic and did not stay in one particular area for long. And about 40 thousand years ago, a supervolcano in southern Italy completely wiped out most of the humans and Neanderthals in Europe. Using DNA analysis, scientists have shown in a new study that the first permanent inhabitants of Europe settled in the Buran-Kaya III cave area on the Crimean Peninsula.
Buran Kaya III, first discovered in 1990, concealed many artifacts dating back 50,000 years, from the Middle Paleolithic period to the Middle Ages. Stone tools and carved bones, similar to artifacts of the Gravettian culture, began to appear here 38-34 thousand years ago. Its representatives spread throughout Europe about 33 thousand years ago, which suggests that Buran-Kaya may have been the cradle of Gravettian culture.
The authors of the new study analyzed the DNA of two men from Buran Kaya III, whose ages are estimated to be 35-37 thousand years old. Their genes were compared with the genomes of other people living in Europe during the same period. The researchers concluded that after the climate warmed about 38,000 years ago, people from Crimea and other southern regions settled in Eastern and Central Europe, bringing their cultures with them.
Previous scientists to create There is a cross-shaped relic in the house of a Polish knight.