Recent research has uncovered remarkable archaeological finds at a site in western Ukraine that suggests it may be the oldest evidence of early humans in Europe. Researchers used advanced geological techniques to date the oldest part of the artifact-rich site to 1.4 million years ago. Although the exact species of the creators of these artifacts remains uncertain, it is believed that they were some form of hominids, a group that includes modern humans and our direct ancestors.
The results, published in the journal Nature, support the idea that the first hominins migrated from Africa and arrived in Europe from the east. Previous finds have included 1.2-million-year-old hominin remains in Spain and 1.8-million-year-old remains in Georgia. This new evidence fills a significant gap in the timeline and geography of human migration.
The research was led by Roman Garba, an archaeologist from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. "The beauty of this study is that the results match what many have long expected," Garba said. "They came from the east. Now we have come with evidence, with evidence of the places in between, in the middle."
Juan Luis Arzuaga, a professor of paleontology at the Complutense University in Madrid, who previously discovered a hominin jaw more than a million years old in Spain, called the new date "very plausible" for early hominins in Europe.
The Korolevo site in Ukraine, near the border with Romania, has been excavated for nearly 50 years, yielding 90,000 stone artifacts made by early hominids. These layers reflect different periods of occupation, dating from 1.4 million years ago to 30,000 years ago.
Currently, the artifacts are stored in the Archaeological Museum of the Institute of Archeology in Kyiv. Despite the war, they have survived unscathed, although access to them is difficult due to the ongoing conflict.
The dating technique used in the new study involves measuring isotopes created by cosmic rays in quartz crystals in the site's rock layers. After burial, these isotopes begin to decay, allowing researchers to estimate the time since burial. This method estimated the age of the Korolevo site at 1.4 million years.
Not all experts agree with the new dating. Giovanni Muttoni of the University of Milan believes that there is too much uncertainty in the cosmological dating method and suggests that hominins appeared around 900,000 years ago due to climatic changes in Africa. A new study is expected soon to confirm this opinion.
The research team believes these dates may indicate that early humans, possibly Homo erectus, traveled as far north as Korolev under favorable climatic conditions between 1.3 million and 1.5 million years ago. However, it is unlikely that any sites showing evidence of Homo erectus will be found further north because ice sheets have reached the Carpathians twice in the last half million years.
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