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Oldest evidence of Homo sapiens in northern Europe discovered
The first modern humans to live in northern Europe arrived more than 45,000 years ago.
Comparisons of tools and bones discovered in Germany suggest that pioneering members of our species might have made it as far as Britain while the Neanderthals were still alive.
Human remains uncovered deep beneath a German castle are telling the hidden history of our ancient relatives.
Until relatively recently, it was thought that our species moved across Europe gradually, slowly replacing the Neanderthals who already called the continent home. However, recent discoveries suggest that some pioneering Homo sapiens had been attempting to colonise Europe thousands of years earlier.
Bone fragments discovered in Ilsenhöhle cave under Ranis Castle add to this increasingly complex picture. They reveal that our species braved the biting cold to reach northern Europe by 45,000 years ago, sheltering in the cave on and off for thousands of years.
The results of this research have now been published in a series of papers in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution. Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin, who is a co-author on the three articles, says, ‘The Ranis cave site provides evidence for the first dispersal of Homo sapiens across the higher latitudes of Europe.
‘This fundamentally changes our previous knowledge about this time period, showing Homo sapiens reached northwestern Europe long before Neanderthals disappeared in the southwest.’
Professor Chris Stringer, an expert in human evolution at the Natural History Museum who was not involved in the study, adds, ‘The results are important in showing yet another early presence of our species in Europe and surprising in showing that they were already coping with glacial conditions at this early stage.’
‘This raises the question of why these various bands of Homo sapiens could not sustain their early occupations of western and northern Europe. It’s possible that their small groups were vulnerable to rapidly changing conditions or were eventually outcompeted by Neanderthals living in the area.’
‘Future research may help to answer this and other questions about the arrival of our species in Europe.’
Many of the bone fragments shared mitochondrial DNA, suggesting they either came from one individual or siblings. Image © Tim Schüler TLDA, licensed under CC-BY-ND 4.0 via EurekAlert!
Early arrivals
For hundreds of thousands of years, Europe was the home of the Neanderthals. Our close relatives are thought to have been in the continent more than 400,000 years ago, and it took our species some time to catch up.
While Homo sapiens made occasional forays into the fringes of eastern Europe, it wasn’t until much more recently that modern humans moved deeper into the continent.
A modern human tooth found at Grotte Mandrin in France, for instance, has been dated to around 54,000 years old. Investigations of the site suggest that humans lived in the region for a time before the Neanderthals returned.
The finds at Ranis now add more evidence to this picture of patchwork migrations. While the site had previously been excavated in the 1930s, the researchers wanted to restart the dig to apply more modern scientific techniques.
Dr Marcel Weiss, a co-author on the papers, says, ‘The challenge was to excavate the full eight metre sequence from top to bottom, hoping that some deposits were left from the 1930s excavation. We were fortunate to find a 1.7-metre-thick rock the previous excavators did not get past.’
Among the layers, the team found fragments of bones belonging to humans, woolly rhino, reindeer and other animals. The team also identified more human fossils among the remains from the original dig, which had gone unrecognised until now.
Bones in certain layers show evidence of being cut, suggesting they were eaten by humans, while those in others had gnawing marks from carnivores like cave bears. The team think that the cave was probably used intermittently by humans, bears and hyenas, who each stayed in Ranis for a short period before moving on.
Despite being cut and gnawed, the bones were well-preserved enough that the team were able to analyse protein and DNA from inside the fossils. In particular, the researchers were able to extract DNA from mitochondria, the part of an animal cell that generates energy.
While these can’t tell you much about the genetics of the person themselves, they can reveal who they were related to. It revealed that not only were the bones Homo sapiens, but that they appeared to be distantly related to remains previously found in Czechia.
This connection suggests these pioneering humans were part of a greater network across Europe at the time, a finding which has also helped to explain an archaeological anomaly.
Solving the mystery of the LRJ
Named for the places it was first discovered, the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) complex of stone tools has remained a mystery for many years. While the tools have been excavated from sites in the UK, Germany and Poland, their makers have remained elusive.
This is because the age of the LRJ overlaps with the presence of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in Europe. As no bones of either human species had ever been found alongside them, it’s not been certain which species made these tools.
However, by returning to Ranis, one of the sites the LRJ was originally described from, the researchers have now managed to link the tools to Homo sapiens. While the tools themselves were removed by the 1930s excavation, they were in the same layers as the human bone fragments the recent dig uncovered.
It suggests that some small groups of Homo sapiens moved rapidly across Europe - and potentially all the way to the UK - ahead of a much larger migration that occurred thousands of years later.
This has surprised the researchers, as their chemical analyses have suggested that the area was between 7 to 15⁰C cooler than it is now, with conditions similar to Siberia. The bitter cold of Europe was believed to have been a major reason why Homo sapiens were kept out of the continent for so long.
Dr Sarah Pederzani, the lead author on one of the papers, adds, ‘Until recently it was thought that resilience to cold-climate conditions did not appear until several thousand years later, so this is a fascinating result. Perhaps cold steppes with larger herds of prey animals were more attractive environments for these human groups than previously appreciated.’
The team hope that ongoing research will allow them to discover more about these humans by sequencing the DNA of the bone fragments themselves. Not only would this reveal their characteristics, but it might also show evidence of any interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
Complementary research at other LRJ sites around Europe will help to build up a picture of these little known pioneers, and reveal what our species was doing in the continent.
‘The new studies show what can now be recovered from sites that were considered to be exhausted through previous excavations during the last century,’ Chris says.
‘Hopefully, these studies can be replicated for the other components of the LRJ complex in Britain and Poland, and provide further insights into other enigmatic industries like the Bohunician industry of central Europe.’
