Into Europe

Modern humans appeared in Europe between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago. Descendants of Naomi and Rohani living in the Upper Paleolithic period embraced specialised stone tools, figurative artwork like cave paintings and rock sculptures. Europa (haplogroup U) (Oppenheimer), descendent of Rohani, is estimated to have appeared during this time [16].

Recently, Homo sapiens fossils from the site of Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria provided the first evidence for the first dispersal of H. sapiens across the mid-latitudes of Eurasia. Pioneer groups rapidly dispersed bringing new behaviours into Europe and encountered, influenced, and eventually replaced existing archaic populations of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Within 20,000 years of leaving Africa, H. sapiens had become the dominant hominid species in Europe.

Excavations at the cave site in 2015 revealed the most spectacular finds including thousands of animal bones, stone and bone tools, beads and pendants and the remains of five human fossils [17]. These artefacts provide a really clear chronological picture of when Homo sapiens first occupied this cave, some 45,000 years ago and highlight the lifestyles of these hunter gatherers and their ability to exploit their environment. 

Important technological advances were made by the Upper Palaeolithic cultures, such as the invention of flint tools and fine-edged blades. It was also a time of artistic innovation, as seen in the cave paintings that can be found across Asia as well as in Western Europe, testifying not only to the development of technologies and tools but also to a high level of cultural and intellectual achievement. Descendents of Europa benefitted from this cultural awakening, which coincided with a period of rapid population growth and expansion resulting in nine major surviving daughter groups, U1 through U9, which are now found among people who have ancestral origins throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

Within 10,000-15,000 years Ursula (haplogroup U5), daughter of the Europa lineage, is born. This ancient lineage is thought to have evolved in the western steppe region [18] before expanding further into Europe. The Dolní Věstonice burial site in the Czech Republic reveal how far the U5 population had dispersed with the presence of ancient remains of two U5 individuals dated at approximately 31,155 years old [19]. This archaeological site is an abundant source of prehistoric artifacts from the Gravettian period suggesting that carriers of haplogroup U5 were part of the pan-European Gravettian culture.

Gravettian Culture

Members of the Gravettian culture wore shells as ornaments, sewed clothing with bone needles, created stylised ‘venus’ female  figurines with elaborate headdresses and exaggerated breasts and buttocks, and left their distinctive art and artifacts from Spain to western Russia. The Gravettian were characterised by a stone tool industry with small pointed blades being used for big-game hunting, such as bison, horse, reindeer, and mammoth. These hunter-gatherers also practised specialised hunting, selective butchery and food storage. Despite these shared cultural practises, new genetic evidence shows the Gravettian were from two distinct groups, the first living in and around France and Spain, the second from across the Czech Republic and Italy [20].

The eastern Gravettians were specialised mammoth hunters that built sturdy structures out of the animals’ bones, such as those at Předmostí, an exceptional prehistoric site located near Brno in the Czech Republic. Around 30,000 years ago it was inhabited by people who used the bones of more than 1000 mammoths to build their settlement and to carve ivory sculptures. Analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in human and animal fossil bones from the site found that humans consumed mammoth in large quantities. 

Xenia Emerges 

Around 31,800 years ago in West Asia, during the late Palaeolithic period, Xenia was born bearing a mutation that defines haplogroup X [13]. This mutation has never been found among Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Europe or North Africa and is considered one of the rarest matrilineal haplogroups in Europe, found in less than 2% of native Europeans [10]. Unlike many of the other West Eurasian haplogroups, haplogroup X descends directly from the older haplogroup N. The later arrival of Near Eastern farmers in the Middle East and Caucasus during the Neolithic period supported further diffusion of haplogroup X across Europe [22]. 

The Last Glacial Maximum

Carriers of both haplogroup U5 and X experienced the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 26,000 to 19,000 years ago), a major climatic event with a period of extensive global ice covering almost 25% of the earth’s land surface. In North America during the LGM, all of Canada, the southern coast of Alaska, and the top of the United States were covered with ice extending as far south as the states of Iowa and West Virginia. Glacial ice also covered the western coast of South America, and in the Andes extending into Chile and most of Patagonia. In Europe, the ice extended as far south as Germany and Poland; in Asia ice sheets reached Tibet. During this particularly harsh period, the sea level fell by ~130 m [23] and average global temperatures were 6 degrees celsius cooler than today [24].