Ancient Bones Are Oldest Evidence of Modern Humans in Europe

The oldest bones ofHomo sapiensever found in Europe have been discovered in a Bulgarian cave, providing the earliest known evidence of our species' emergence in the European continent, according to new research.

The appearance and spread of modern humans in Europe is a difficult timeline for researchers to reconstruct, owing to a scarcity of sufficiently ancient remains that have been identified in the fossil record.

When modern humans did show up, though, our arrival ultimately sealed the fate of the indigenous Neanderthals who called Europe home before us, as we then proceeded to swiftly replace them over the course of the next several thousand years.

Now, the chronology of this mysterious transition during the Initial Upper Palaeolithic period has come into clearer view, thanks to the discovery and dating of H. sapiens remains and other artifacts buried deep within an archaeological site called Bacho Kiro Cave in central Bulgaria, situated on the foot of the Balkan Mountains.

Bacho Kiro has long been known to be a rich deposit of Palaeolithic fossils, with a number of excavations taking place in the 20th century, some of which, during the 1970s, yielded fragmentary human remains that were subsequently lost, researchers explain in a new paper. Read the free article.