Introduction

Europe is the only continent where geneticists have analysed substantial numbers of ancient hominins for their DNA, both ancient Homo neanderthalensis and ancient Homo sapiens individuals. The ancient DNA results are partly expected, as in the case of the Neanderthals, but partly contradict previous reconstructions of European prehistory on the basis of modern genetic variation. This may be an omen for other continents, where extensive settlement hypotheses have been proposed on the basis of modern genetic variation, but where ancient DNA has not yet been recovered to the same extent.

The Development of Studies on Modern European DNA

The archaeological record indicates that the first modern humans arrived in Europe via Southeast Europe about forty-five thousand years ago, conventionally associated with the Aurignacian culture. There, modern humans would have encountered Neanderthals, who had existed in Europe for more than two hundred thousand years previously. Neanderthals and moderns lived on the same continent until about thirty thousand years ago, when the Neanderthals suddenly became extinct (the last Neanderthal skeletons are found in southern Spain and Croatia). This extinction may coincide with the appearance of a second modern European culture, the Gravettian, and with a sudden change in the climatic conditions – from erratic climate swings seen during the early Ice Age (sixty thousand to thirty thousand years ago) to much more settled conditions about thirty thousand years ago. Fine-scaled radiocarbon dating reveals that the coexistence of modern humans and Neanderthals at any given location in Europe lasted for less than one thousand years (Mellars 2006). It remains a mystery why the Neanderthals should have succumbed to competition or climate change after inhabiting Europe for so long, but it is possible that the more stable conditions by thirty thousand years ago destroyed any advantages the Neanderthals may have had during the climatically more erratic periods.