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Ice Age survivors

Date:
March 1, 2023
Source:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Summary:
Large-scale genomic analysis documents the migrations of Ice Age hunter-gatherers over a period of 30,000 years -- they took shelter in Western Europe but died out on the Italian peninsula.
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FULL STORY

The team analysed the genomes of 356 prehistoric hunter gatherers from different archaeological cultures -- including new data sets of 116 individuals from 14 different European and Central Asian countries. Modern humans began to spread across Eurasia around 45,000 years ago but previous research showed that the first modern humans that arrived in Europe did not contribute to later populations. This study focuses on the people who lived between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago and that are, at least partially, the ancestors of the present-day population of Western Eurasia, including -- for the first time -- the genomes of people who lived during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the coldest phase of the last Ice Age, around 25,000 years ago.

Climatic refugium or dead end?

Surprisingly, the research team found that populations from different regions associated with the Gravettian culture, which was widespread across the European continent between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago, were not closely related to each other. They were linked by a common archaeological culture: they used similar weapons and produced similar portable art. Genetically, however, the populations from western and southwestern Europe (today's France and Iberia) differed from contemporaneous populations from central and southern Europe (today's Czech Republic and Italy).

Furthermore, the gene pool of the western Gravettian populations is found continuously for at least 20,000 years: their descendants who are associated with the Solutrean and Magdalenian cultures stayed in southwestern Europe during the coldest period of the last Ice Age (between 25,000 and 19,000 years ago) and later spread north-eastward to the rest of Europe. "With these findings, we can for the first time directly support the hypothesis that during the Last Glacial Maximum people found refuge in the climatically more favourable region of southwestern Europe" says first author Cosimo Posth.

The Italian peninsula was previously considered to be another climatic refugium for humans during the LGM. However, the research team found no evidence for this, on the contrary: hunter-gatherer populations associated with the Gravettian culture and living in central and southern Europe are no longer genetically detectable after the LGM. People with a new gene pool settled in these areas, instead. "We find that individuals associated with a later culture, the Epigravettian, are genetically distinct from the area's previous inhabitants," says co-author He Yu. "Presumably, these people came from the Balkans, arrived first in northern Italy around the time of the glacial maximum and spread all the way south to Sicily."

Large-scale genetic replacement

The analysed genomes also show that the descendants of these Epigravettian inhabitants of the Italian peninsula spread across the rest of Europe about 14,000 years ago, replacing populations associated with the Magdalenian culture. The research team describes a large-scale genetic replacement that may have been caused, in part, by climatic changes that forced people to migrate: "At that time, the climate warmed up quickly and considerably and forests spread across the European continent. This may have prompted people from the south to expand their habitat. The previous inhabitants may have migrated to the north as their habitat, the 'mammoth' steppe, dwindled," says Johannes Krause, the study's senior author.

Furthermore, the findings show that there had been no genetic exchange between contemporaneous hunter-gatherer populations in western and eastern Europe for more than 6,000 years. Interactions between people from central and eastern Europe can only be detected again from 8,000 years ago. "At that time, hunter-gatherers with distinct ancestries and appearances started to mix with each other. They were different in many aspects, including their skin and eye colour," says He Yu.

During this time agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle spread from Anatolia to Europe. "It is possible that the migration of early farmers into Europe triggered the retreat of hunter-gatherer populations to the northern edge of Europe. At the same time, these two groups started mixing with each other, and continued to do so for around 3,000 years," Krause says.

"The data we gained from this study provides us with astonishingly detailed insights into the developments and encounters of West Eurasian hunter-gatherer groups," Posth summarises. "Further interdisciplinary research will clarify which exact processes were responsible for the genetic replacements of entire Ice Age populations."


Story Source:

Materials provided by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Cosimo Posth, He Yu, Ayshin Ghalichi, Hélène Rougier, Isabelle Crevecoeur, Yilei Huang, Harald Ringbauer, Adam B. Rohrlach, Kathrin Nägele, Vanessa Villalba-Mouco, Rita Radzeviciute, Tiago Ferraz, Alexander Stoessel, Rezeda Tukhbatova, Dorothée G. Drucker, Martina Lari, Alessandra Modi, Stefania Vai, Tina Saupe, Christiana L. Scheib, Giulio Catalano, Luca Pagani, Sahra Talamo, Helen Fewlass, Laurent Klaric, André Morala, Mathieu Rué, Stéphane Madelaine, Laurent Crépin, Jean-Baptiste Caverne, Emmy Bocaege, Stefano Ricci, Francesco Boschin, Priscilla Bayle, Bruno Maureille, Foni Le Brun-Ricalens, Jean-Guillaume Bordes, Gregorio Oxilia, Eugenio Bortolini, Olivier Bignon-Lau, Grégory Debout, Michel Orliac, Antoine Zazzo, Vitale Sparacello, Elisabetta Starnini, Luca Sineo, Johannes van der Plicht, Laure Pecqueur, Gildas Merceron, Géraldine Garcia, Jean-Michel Leuvrey, Coralie Bay Garcia, Asier Gómez-Olivencia, Marta Połtowicz-Bobak, Dariusz Bobak, Mona Le Luyer, Paul Storm, Claudia Hoffmann, Jacek Kabaciński, Tatiana Filimonova, Svetlana Shnaider, Natalia Berezina, Borja González-Rabanal, Manuel R. González Morales, Ana B. Marín-Arroyo, Belén López, Carmen Alonso-Llamazares, Annamaria Ronchitelli, Caroline Polet, Ivan Jadin, Nicolas Cauwe, Joaquim Soler, Neus Coromina, Isaac Rufí, Richard Cottiaux, Geoffrey Clark, Lawrence G. Straus, Marie-Anne Julien, Silvia Renhart, Dorothea Talaa, Stefano Benazzi, Matteo Romandini, Luc Amkreutz, Hervé Bocherens, Christoph Wißing, Sébastien Villotte, Javier Fernández-López de Pablo, Magdalena Gómez-Puche, Marco Aurelio Esquembre-Bebia, Pierre Bodu, Liesbeth Smits, Bénédicte Souffi, Rimantas Jankauskas, Justina Kozakaitė, Christophe Cupillard, Hartmut Benthien, Kurt Wehrberger, Ralf W. Schmitz, Susanne C. Feine, Tim Schüler, Corinne Thevenet, Dan Grigorescu, Friedrich Lüth, Andreas Kotula, Henny Piezonka, Franz Schopper, Jiří Svoboda, Sandra Sázelová, Andrey Chizhevsky, Aleksandr Khokhlov, Nicholas J. Conard, Frédérique Valentin, Katerina Harvati, Patrick Semal, Bettina Jungklaus, Alexander Suvorov, Rick Schulting, Vyacheslav Moiseyev, Kristiina Mannermaa, Alexandra Buzhilova, Thomas Terberger, David Caramelli, Eveline Altena, Wolfgang Haak, Johannes Krause. Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers. Nature, 2023; 615 (7950): 117 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05726-0

Cite This Page:

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "Ice Age survivors." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 March 2023. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230301120846.htm>.
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (2023, March 1). Ice Age survivors. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 31, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230301120846.htm
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "Ice Age survivors." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230301120846.htm (accessed October 31, 2024).

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