​The moment when the first representatives of the species Homo sapiens entered Europe was and remains controversial. All the more, questions remained about the populations that managed to take the first successful steps and, above all, leave a lasting genetic imprint on modern Europeans.

A recent idea, by the way, very controversial, sends the first attempt to colonize Europe by Homo sapiens about 54,000 years ago. This hypothesis, put forward by the French archaeologist Louis Slimac, states that a community from the Middle East crossed the Mediterranean Sea to land in the south of France, but without succession. However, it is difficult to believe such a hypothesis for sailors who at that time covered thousands of kilometers by sea. The reasons are countless, but we will not list them today.

Otherwise, recent discoveries in Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria, as well as an image of a skull discovered in 1950 in the Zlati Kun Cave in the Czech Republic, point to possible first waves of migration occurring around 45,000-47,000 years ago. Waves that also turned out to be genetic dead ends in the vast majority of them. Genetic data indicate, not continuity, but the disappearance of most of those small communities that took the first steps on the Old Continent.

Most likely, they failed during the same drastic climatic fluctuations about 40,000 years ago that led to the sudden decline and subsequent extinction of the Neanderthals.

They were followed by the carriers of the Proto-Aurignacian and Aurignacian cultures (somewhat contradictory names, since, although the name emphasizes continuity, the two cultures are partly contemporary and manifested in different areas of Europe). Thus, while the Proto-Aurignacian appears mainly in southwestern and south-central Europe and appears to be of Levantine origin, the Aurignacian appears in the earliest stratigraphic records in central and northern Europe.

After the Proto-Aurignacian and Aurignacian (c. 43,000/37,000 – 26,000 years ago) a new culture appeared in Europe, the Gravette, a culture that appears across the continent from Britain and Portugal to the Russian Plain, and which lasts from 33,000 years to about 20,000 years ago. In appearance, it is a homogeneous culture, if one does not take into account the differences of local facies, which indicates the colonization of Europe stricto sensu.

Well, the origin of this Gravetta culture was and still is very controversial, as no one could give a clear answer as to where this culture was born, and above all, who were the creators of some of the most famous Paleolithic forms in particular. art, statuettes like Venus.

A recent study published in the journal Nature by a French-Ukrainian group of researchers claims that it has finally been possible to find an answer to this mystery that has puzzled prehistorians for more than a century.

More specifically, it concerns the genetic analysis of two fragmented skulls discovered in the Ukrainian site of Buran Kayan III, Crimea, in a sedimentary layer that dates back to approximately 36,000-37,000 years ago. And the genetic data provided by these fossils supports the idea of ​​continuity between these individuals and the bearers of the Gravettian culture, which was born about five millennia later.

In addition, the study authors say, the material culture discovered in the same context as the skull fragments bears early signs of Gravetta. And the sample of Gravet type artifacts was provided by the special conditions of Eastern Europe. We are talking about communities specializing in hunting large animals (bison, rhinoceros or mammoths) in the open space of the subarctic steppes that dominated the Russian plain, communities that, in the absence of natural shelters, built their camps in the open. air.

In conclusion, say the authors of the study, the so controversial origin of the gravette would be Eastern European, a fact that could explain the presence of such individuals in the same time period, including in eastern Romania. But data on this wave of migration on the territory of Romania, let’s call it Protogravity, we will provide when the study of Romanian researchers is published (currently in the pre-print version).

Finally, the Gravettian culture disappears about 20,000 years ago, and with it most of the genetic traces of these populations. Its place was taken by the epigravette in the east, south and center of Europe, so that Solutrean and later Magdalenian communities appeared in the southwest of the continent.

Genetic evidence, even if far from complete, points to a different genetic origin from the Gravettes for these populations that repopulated Europe. And this testifies to another mass disappearance of Gravettian communities settled on the European continent. However, this time we are talking about the consequences of the last glacial maximum.

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