Creationism in Crisis
30 Thousand Years of Continuous European Human History
30 Thousand Years of Continuous European Human History
Depiction of the people of the Ice Age.
Credit: Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock
Artist's impression of life in a Gravettian camp
It's another bad day for Creationism. Close on the news that scientists have reconstructed the last 100 million years of the history of Earth's surface, comes news that a different group of scientists have revealed the last 30,000 years of the history of Homo sapiens in Europe.
Since Creationists are capable of holding to the belief that Earth is only 10,000 years old because ancient Bronze Age nomads who knew no better thought so, despite the fact that the last 100 million years of its history is known in detail, they should have little difficulty in ignoring the evidence that Europeans have a known history stretching back three times longer than they believe Earth has existed. After all, what is a mere 30,000 years when 100 million years can be ignored?
In fact, we know from fossil evidence that early modern human hunter-gatherers spread out of Africa and across Eurasia beginning about 45,000 years ago. The mystery was what happened to them during period between 25,000 and 19,000 years ago when the last Ice Age was at its maximum and much of Europe was under vast ice sheets like that covering Greenland today.
Some authorities believed that European Homo sapiens disappeared during that time, but this recent research shows that they hung on in France and the Iberian Peninsula, to repopulate Europe as the ice sheets retreated north. The evidence is in the traces of their DNA now found in modern Europeans. The scientists who made this discovery have published their work in two papers, one in Nature and the other in Nature, Ecology & Evolution
One of the authors of these papers, Adam B. Rohrlach of the Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany and the School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, has written about the team's research in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.
We thought the first hunter‑gatherers in Europe went missing during the last ice age. Now, ancient DNA analysis says otherwise
Credit: Tom Bjoerklund
Reconstruction of a hunter-gatherer associated with the Gravettian culture (32,000-24,000 years ago), inspired by the archaeological findings at the Arene Candide site (Italy)
Credit: Tom Bjoerklund
Adam "Ben" Rohrlach, University of Adelaide Hunter-gatherers took shelter from the ice age in Southwestern Europe, but were replaced on the Italian Peninsula according to two new studies, published in Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution today.
Modern humans first began to spread across Eurasia approximately 45,000 years ago, arriving from the near east. Previous research claimed these people disappeared when massive ice sheets covered much of Europe around 25,000–19,000 years ago. By comparing the DNA of various ancient humans, we show this was not the case for all hunter-gatherer groups.
Our new results show the hunter-gatherers of Central and Southern Europe did disappear during the last ice age. However, their cousins in what is now France and Spain survived, leaving genetic traces still visible in the DNA of Western European peoples nearly 30,000 years later.
Two studies with one intertwining story
In our first study in Nature, we analysed the genomes – the complete set of DNA a person carries – of 356 prehistoric hunter-gatherers. In fact, our study compared every available ancient hunter-gatherer genome.
In our second study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, we analysed the oldest hunter-gatherer genome recovered from the southern tip of Spain, belonging to someone who lived approximately 23,000 years ago. We also analysed three early farmers who lived roughly 6,000 years ago in southern Spain. This allowed us to fill an important sampling gap for this region.
Human fossils that were genetically analysed in this study were found on the Dutch coast and dated from around 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. They originally came from Doggerland, a now submerged land under the North Sea, where European hunter-gatherers lived.
Credit: National Museum of Antiquities (RMO),
modified by Michelle O‘Reilly
modified by Michelle O‘Reilly
Post-ice-age genetic replacement
Between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer individuals (associated with what’s known as Gravettian culture) were widespread across the European continent. This critical time period ends at the Last Glacial Maximum. This was the coldest period of the last ice age in Europe, and took place 24,000 to 19,000 years ago.
Our data show that populations from Southwestern Europe (today’s France and Iberia), and Central and Southern Europe (today’s Italy and Czechia), were not closely genetically related. These two distinct groups were instead linked by similar weapons and art.
We could see that Central and Southern European Gravettian populations left no genetic signal after the Last Glacial Maximum – in other words, they simply disappeared. The individuals associated with a later culture (known as the Epigravettian) were not descendants of the Gravettian. According to one of my Nature co-authors, He Yu, they were
genetically distinct from the area’s previous inhabitants. Presumably, these people came from the Balkans, arrived first in northern Italy around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, and spread all the way south to Sicily.In Central and Southern Europe, our data indicate people associated with the Epigravettian populations of the Italian peninsula later spread across Europe. This occurred approximately 14,000 years ago, following the end of the ice age.
Male skull and stone tools from Groß Fredenwalde (Germany), dated to 7,000 years ago. This individual’s population lived side-by-side with the first European farmers without mixing. (Cooperation with Brandenburgisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege)
Credit: Volker Minkus
While the Gravettian populations of Central and Southern Europe disappeared, the fate of the Southwestern populations was not the same.
We detected the genetic profile of Southwestern Gravettian populations again and again for the next 20,000 years in Western Europe. We saw this first in their direct descendants (known as Solutrean and Magdalenian cultures). These were the people who took refuge and flourished in Southwestern Europe during the ice age. Once the ice age ended, the Magdalenians spread northeastward, back into Europe.
Remarkably, the 23,000-year-old remains of a Solutrean individual from Cueva de Malalmuerzo in Spain allowed us to make a direct link to the first modern humans that settled Europe. We could connect them to a 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium, and then to hunter-gatherers who lived in Western Europe long after the Last Glacial Maximum.
Archaeological cave site of Cueva del Malalmuerzo from the southern tip of Spain where the 23,000 year old Solutrean individual was discovered.
Credit: Pedro Cantalejo
Sea levels during the ice age were lower, making it only 13 kilometres from the tip of Spain to Northern Africa. However, we observed no genetic links between individuals in southern Spain and northern Morocco from 14,000 years ago. This showed that while European populations retreated south during the ice age, they surprisingly stopped before reaching Northern Africa.
Our results show the special role the Iberian peninsula played as a safe haven for humans during the ice age. The genetic legacy of hunter-gatherers would survive in the region after more than 30,000 years, unlike their distant relatives further east.
Post ice-age interaction
Some 2,000 years after the end of the ice age, there were again two genetically distinct hunter-gatherer groups. There was the “old” group in Western and Central Europe, and the “more recent” group in Eastern Europe.
These groups showed no evidence of genetic exchange with southwestern hunter-gatherer populations for approximately 6,000 years, until roughly 8,000 years ago.
At this time, agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle had begun to spread with new peoples from Anatolia into Europe, forcing hunter-gatherers to retreat to the northern fringes of Europe.
Adam "Ben" Rohrlach, Mathematics Lecturer and Archaeogeneticist, University of Adelaide
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The research and its significance are also described in a news release from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany:
With the largest dataset of prehistoric European hunter-gatherer genomes ever generated, an international research team has rewritten the genetic history of our ancestors. This study was led by researchers from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, Peking University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, in collaboration with 125 international scientists.
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).The prehistoric human groups that archaeologists refer to as Gravettian were widespread in Europe about 32,000-24,000 years ago. Despite sharing several similar cultural traits, Gravettian populations from western and eastern/southern Europe were genetically different. The west Gravettian population (left) survived during the Last Glacial Maximum while the eastern and south Gravettian populations disappeared.© Image by Michelle O'Reilly and Laurent Klaric,
inspired by the original work by Benoit Clarys
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. 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.
He Yu, co-corresponding author.
Department of Archaeogenetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
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:Oldest evidence of migration during a climate warming: Male and female skull buried in western Germany (Oberkassel) about 14,000 years ago. Genetically those individuals derived from the south.© Jürgen Vogel, LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn
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,
Johannes Krause, senior author.
Department of Archaeogenetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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.
He Yu, co-corresponding author
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,
Johannes Krause.The data we gained from this study provides us with astonishingly detailed insights into the developments and encounters of West Eurasian hunter-gatherer groups. Further interdisciplinary research will clarify which exact processes were responsible for the genetic replacements of entire Ice Age populations.
Cosimo Posth, co-corresponding author
Archaeo- and Palaeogenetics
Institute for Archaeological Sciences
Department of Geosciences
University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
The team have published two papers on their findings; the first in Nature:
Abstract
Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years1,2. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and poor molecular preservation of human remains from that period3. Here we analyse 356 ancient hunter-gatherer genomes, including new genomic data for 116 individuals from 14 countries in western and central Eurasia, spanning between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago. We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe4, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture. From at least 14,000 years ago, an ancestry related to this culture spread from the south across the rest of Europe, largely replacing the Magdalenian-associated gene pool. After a period of limited admixture that spanned the beginning of the Mesolithic, we find genetic interactions between western and eastern European hunter-gatherers, who were also characterized by marked differences in phenotypically relevant variants.
Posth, C., Yu, H., Ghalichi, A. et al.
Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers.
Nature 615, 117–126 (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05726-0
Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
The second in Nature, Ecology & Evolution:
AbstractJust as in China, Egypt, India and elsewhere, there is evidence of cultures and human habitation from well before Creationist superstition says Earth, and indeed the entire Universe, were created, and continuing in unbroken sequence through Creationism's supposed genocidal flood up to the present day.
Human populations underwent range contractions during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) which had lasting and dramatic effects on their genetic variation. The genetic ancestry of individuals associated with the post-LGM Magdalenian technocomplex has been interpreted as being derived from groups associated with the pre-LGM Aurignacian. However, both these ancestries differ from that of central European individuals associated with the chronologically intermediate Gravettian. Thus, the genomic transition from pre- to post-LGM remains unclear also in western Europe, where we lack genomic data associated with the intermediate Solutrean, which spans the height of the LGM. Here we present genome-wide data from sites in Andalusia in southern Spain, including from a Solutrean-associated individual from Cueva del Malalmuerzo, directly dated to ~23,000 cal yr BP. The Malalmuerzo individual carried genetic ancestry that directly connects earlier Aurignacian-associated individuals with post-LGM Magdalenian-associated ancestry in western Europe. This scenario differs from Italy, where individuals associated with the transition from pre- and post-LGM carry different genetic ancestries. This suggests different dynamics in the proposed southern refugia of Ice Age Europe and posits Iberia as a potential refugium for western European pre-LGM ancestry. More, individuals from Cueva Ardales, which were thought to be of Palaeolithic origin, date younger than expected and, together with individuals from the Andalusian sites Caserones and Aguilillas, fall within the genetic variation of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age individuals from southern Iberia.
Villalba-Mouco, V., van de Loosdrecht, M.S., Rohrlach, A.B. et al.
A 23,000-year-old southern Iberian individual links human groups that lived in Western Europe before and after the Last Glacial Maximum.
Nat Ecol Evol (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-01987-0
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
Moreover, Creationists expect people to believe that in a few generations, the descendants of Noah and his incestuous family had migrated to almost all the globe, where they forgot the name of Noah, the founder of the human race, forgot about the god who had wiped out their ancestors and invented new gods and new religions together with unrelated languages and folkloric histories, and yet one small Middle Eastern tribe remembered it all in word-perfect detail and wrote it all down in an inerrant account.
To believe that takes an appalling level of wilful ignorance of geology, geography, anthropology and history as well as biology, and a level of childlike credulity that calls into question the degree to which humans have evolved intelligence and the ability to think logically.
The only thing capable of inhibiting intellectual functioning to that degree is a mind-numbing psychosis; an acute anxiety disorder or morbid theophobia, caused by consistent and repeated mental abuse during the impressionable phase of early childhood.
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