The Grange/Geigl Lab published a new article in Nature Ecology and Evolution :
Genome sequences of 36-37,000 year-old modern humans at Buran-Kaya III in Crimea
Two 36 and 37,000-year-old genomes from Crimea shed light on the first successful implantations of modern Humans in Europe and on the emergence of the Gravettian culture
The implantation of anatomically modern Humans in Eurasia after their migration out of Africa was a progressive and perilous process starting around 60-50 000 years ago and identified in Eurasia through the transition between the Middle and the Upper Palaeolithic. At that time, small populations migrated into Eurasia who must have suffered from the strong climatic fluctuations and in particular the cold periods. These very first populations interbred with Neanderthals but left no or almost no descendants in the Upper Palaeolithic. A major climatic crisis started around 40,000 years ago and was reinforced through the eruption of the super-volcano close to the present-day city of Naples. It is a hallmark for the transition between these very first human populations in Europe that seem to have disappeared and the migration wave that followed. The « Epigenomics & Paleogenomics » group of the Institut Jacques Monod generated and analysed the genomes of two cranial fragments from the archaeological site of Buran Kaya III in Crimea dated to 36 and 37,000 years. Their analysis shows that the population to which these individuals belonged was the one that succeeded to settle at long-term in Europe and later created the Gravettian culture, which had its climax in central and western Europe between 31 and 23,000 years ago. This Ice Age culture produced some of the most spectacular sculptures known as “Gravettian Venuses”, such as the Venus from Willendorf and the « La Dame de Brassempouy ».
This study was performed by E. Andrew Bennett, Oğuzhan Parasayan, Eva-Maria Geigl, and Thierry Grange of the “Epigenomics and Paleogenomics” group at the Institut Jacques Monod, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, headed by Eva-Maria Geigl and Thierry Grange. The collaboration involved Alexandr Yanevich of the National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine and director of the excavation at Buran Kaya III, as well as the archaeozoologists Stéphane Péan and Laurent Crépin of the MNHN (Institut de Paléontologie Humaine IPH) and the palaeoanthropologist Sandrine Prat of the Musée de l’Homme, Paris. Eva-Maria Geigl, Thierry Grange and Sandrine Prat are research directors at the CNRS.
Nature Research highlight : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03278-x
Contact:
Eva-Maria Geigl eva-maria.geigl@ijm.fr; 06 52 06 24 76
Thierry Grange thierry.grange@ijm.fr; 06 52 16 02 43
