“What we thought was one homogenous thing in Europe 30,000 years ago is actually two distinct groups.”
Thirty thousand years ago, Europe was a land of open steppes with herds of grazing mammoth and other megafauna—and a strikingly uniform human culture. Its inhabitants, whom archaeologists call the Gravettians, dwelled in caves or in shelters built of mammoth bones.
Many of the samples were in poor condition and some came from unusual contexts, like the now-submerged landscape between the British Isles and the Netherlands. New analytical methods and increasingly powerful DNA sequencing tools enabled researchers to squeeze information from extremely degraded bones and teeth, including some that contained just 1% of their original genetic material.
But the Italian Peninsula, long thought to have been a relatively secure refuge, showed something different. Despite what looked to archaeologists like evidence of continuous occupation during and after the glacial maximum, DNA reveals the refuge was actually a dead end. “We expected Italy to be a climate refugium, but there’s a sharp and complete turnover—it’s a big surprise,” Posth says. “The Gravettian population completely disappears.
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