Robin McKie writes:

Modern humans made several failed attempts to settle in Europe before eventually taking over the continent. This is the stark conclusion of scientists who have been studying the course of Homo sapiens’s exodus from Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

Researchers have recently pinpointed sites in Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic where our ancestors’ remains have been dated as being between 40,000 to 50,000 years old. However, bone analyses have produced genetic profiles that have no match among modern Europeans.

“These early settlements appear to have been created by groups of early modern humans who did not survive to pass on their genes,” said Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London. “They are our species’ lost lineages.

“The crucial point is that the demise of these early modern human settlers meant Neanderthals still occupied Europe for a further few thousand years before Homo sapiens eventually took over the continent.”

Modern humans first appeared in Africa around 200,000 years ago and slowly evolved across the continent before moving into western Asia around 60,000 years ago. Our ancestors then spread across the globe until every other species of hominin on the planet had been rendered extinct, including the Denisovans of east Asia and Homo floresiensis, the “hobbit folk” of Indonesia.

Neanderthals in Europe were one of the last hominin species to succumb, dying out around 39,000 years ago. However, recent studies – outlined at a meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution earlier this year – have shown that this takeover by Homo sapiens was not straightforward. On several occasions, groups of early settlers perished as they moved into the continent. [Continue reading…]