East-to-west human dispersal into Europe 1.4 million years ago

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Garba, R.; Usyk, V.; Yla-Mella, L.; Kamenik, J.; Stuebner, K.; Lachner, J.; Rugel, G.; Veselovsky, F.; Gerasimenko, N.; Herries, A. I. R.; Kucera, J.; Knudsen, M. F.; Jansen, J. D.
• 署名单位: Czech Academy of Sciences; Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Czech Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Sciences Ukraine; Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Czech Academy of Sciences; Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences - Brno; Czech Academy of Sciences; Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Charles University Prague; Helmholtz Association; Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR); Czech Geological Survey; Ministry of Education & Science of Ukraine; Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv; La Trobe University; University of Johannesburg; Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-5948
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3
• 发表日期: 2024-03-28
• 关键词: early pleistocene site; ams-facility dreams; cosmogenic nuclides; lithic industry; half-life; be-10; remains; hominin; dmanisi; burial

摘要

Stone tools stratified in alluvium and loess at Korolevo, western Ukraine, have been studied by several research groups1-3 since the discovery of the site in the 1970s. Although Korolevo's importance to the European Palaeolithic is widely acknowledged, age constraints on the lowermost lithic artefacts have yet to be determined conclusively. Here, using two methods of burial dating with cosmogenic nuclides4,5, we report ages of 1.42 +/- 0.10 million years and 1.42 +/- 0.28 million years for the sedimentary unit that contains Mode-1-type lithic artefacts. Korolevo represents, to our knowledge, the earliest securely dated hominin presence in Europe, and bridges the spatial and temporal gap between the Caucasus (around 1.85-1.78 million years ago)6 and southwestern Europe (around 1.2-1.1 million years ago)7,8. Our findings advance the hypothesis that Europe was colonized from the east, and our analysis of habitat suitability9 suggests that early hominins exploited warm interglacial periods to disperse into higher latitudes and relatively continental sites-such as Korolevo-well before the Middle Pleistocene Transition. Burial-dating methods using cosmogenic nuclides indicate that the oldest stone tools at Korolevo archaeological site in western Ukraine date to around 1.4 million years ago, providing evidence of early human dispersal into Europe from the east.