At https://phys.org/news/2026-10-paleolithic-human-dna-reveals-east.html … we learn that human DNA reveals an east to west connection across Ice Age Europe. Presumably that implies a migration of people. Not surprising as it is thought the Gravettians, the first modern humans in Europe, came from somewhere in the east – such as Russia, or further afield.
More than 30,000 years ago people associated with the arrival of modern humans into Europe, occupying former Neanderthal haunts, are known to archaeologists as the Gravettians. How much admixture was involved is a moot point but geneticists have now found links between eastern and western Gravettian populations, between 34,000 and 25,000 years ago. Well within the Late Glacial Maximum. This may reflect the second event, following on from Laschamp, and dated somewhere in the early 30,000s. Laschamp is associated with a mass die off of animals, such as mammoths and mastadons, as well as a rapid decline in Neanderthal numbers. Neanderthals did not survive the second event – even if they survived to any great point after Laschamp. In Australia the mass die off is dated to the second event – killing off all the large fauna. In other words if the Gravettians moved into eastern Europe prior to the second event they could well have migrated further west in the aftermath. The genetic study may reflect this – although that is not the thrust of the new study. All they have done is proved there was a genetic mix in western Europe, of two Gravettian populations.
The remains of a woman from a cave in SW Europe, who lived around 30,000 years ago, yielded the oldest genome wide data set of modern humans from that locality. Her genetic data provided key evidence of an east to west exchange of DNA. Most of her ancestry was related to western European lineage. She also carried a lot of ancestry from eastern Europe. Genetic models put the gene flow around 32,500 and 31,500 years ago – which by coincidence is just after the second event that went on to usher in the Late Glacial Maximum. Assuming the dates and the genetic modeling are correct.
A similar signal was found in a previous study from France, the Ormesson individual. At the same time genetic data found in Chufin cave in northern Spain indicates European ancestry was preserved intact in the region over thousands of years. Some of this evidence is derived from cave sediments rather than human bones – up to 22,000 years ago. Well within the Late Glacial Maximum. In southern Italy there was a similar signal from a cave sediment layer.