Homo sapiens

Bulgarian fossils show early arrival of Homo sapiens into Europe

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fragmentary bone fossils and a molar found in Bulgaria dated to roughly 45,000 years ago show that Homo sapiens populations swept into Europe – until then a bastion for the Neanderthals – earlier than previously known, scientists said on Monday.

Researchers engage in excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave where Homo sapiens bones dating back about 45,000 years were recovered along with a rich stone tool assemblage, animal bones, bone tools and pendants near Dryanovo, Bulgaria, in an undated picture released May 11, 2020. Tsenka Tsanova/Handout via REUTERS

Researchers said DNA from the five fossils from Bulgaria’s Bacho Kiro cave demonstrated they belonged to anatomically modern Homo sapiens. This evidence resolved a debate over who made a remarkable array of artifacts at the site including stone and bone tools and pendants made of the teeth of cave bears – it was our species in the cave and not Neanderthals.

The research pushes back by thousands of years the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe, a milestone in the history of a species that arose in Africa about 300,000 years ago and then spread worldwide.

Human remains from the cave range from 43,000 to 46,000 years old while associated artifacts were up to 47,000 years old, said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

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