Arrival· Where Sapiens lives
Europe
45 ka
Homo sapiens enters a continent that Neanderthals had held for hundreds of thousands of years.
What the evidence shows
Bacho Kiro Cave, in Bulgaria, gives the tightest chronology available: the Initial Upper Palaeolithic layer runs from 45,820 to 43,650 calibrated years ago, and probably opens at 46,940. Three individuals from it have been sequenced. Every one of them had a Neanderthal ancestor a few generations back in their own family, which makes such unions common rather than exceptional. And they are closer to present-day East Asians and Native Americans than to the West Eurasians who came after them. The first Europeans, genetically speaking, were not Europeans.
Dating & uncertainty
These first Europeans have Neanderthal ancestors six generations back, and most of them left no descendants among Europeans today. Arriving is not the same as staying.
Sources
- Hublin et al. (2020), Nature · Initial Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria
- Hajdinjak et al. (2021), Nature · Initial Upper Paleolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry
- Fewlass et al. (2020), Nature Ecology & Evolution · A 14C chronology for the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition at Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria