During the Late Glacial Maximum humans continued to thrive – especially in East Asia. Even in northern Siberia which was supposed to be extremely cold and unpleasant. Humans disppeared, on the other hand, in NW Europe which was covered in an ice cap. At https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ancient-jomon-dna-reveals-hidden.html … we have a DNA study of the Jomon people of Japan. The people that preceded the arrival of farmers after 3000 years ago [1000BC]. They had lived in Japan between 14,000 and 1000BC without interruption – and they are still present in the DNA of modern Japanese people. DNA extracted from 42 people from the pre-farming era seem to show they became detached from other peoples in East Asia at some point between 27,000 and 19,000 years ago, which is basically the Late Glacial Maximum period. At some point sea levels changed and isolated the Jomon on Japan. Hence, they have a unique DNA in so far as it shows peoples from northern Siberia contributed to their gene pool, as expected. It is assumed by the authors that Japan was a very cold environment during the LGM period.; In particular, in particular, and during the last Ice Age as a whole. Hence, this article seems to concentrate somewhat on the genes that may have allowed Jomon people to survive in a very cold environment. A cold environment that may not have existed in Japan during the LGM, we may note. More interesting is the fact that no trace of Denisovan DNA has survived.
At https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/08/drought-just-exposed-a-7-ton-mammoth-buried-on-this-bulgarian-riverbank-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-years/ … mammoth remains have been uncovered from a riverbank of the Danube in Bulgaria. It was revealed as a result of low water levels flowing through the Danube as a result of dry weather in northern Europe. Various ideas have been put forward as to how such a large animal became embedded in the rock and soil of the Danube basin. No doubt laboratory analysis will throw up even more ideas. Th date itself is surprising as the Danube was in full flow at the end of the last Ice Age, thousands of years ago rather than hundreds of thousands of years ago. I suppose the date is derived from the type of mammoth discovered – which may not have died out as currently situated on the mammoth evolutionary tree. If it was fully fossilised it would have been embedded in rock rather than soil and therefore could have been hundreds of thousands of years ago. We shall have to await developments. It has still not been fully extracted from the riverbank.