Ice Age Secrets

A study of DNA from ancient human bones has helped unlock the secrets of Europe’s Ice Age inhabitants.

16:24 03 May 2016

Researchers, who studied the DNA from ancient human bones, have discovered details about the biology of Europe’s Ice Age inhabitants who lived up to 45,000 years ago.

 

The study in Nature Journal sheds some light over some 40,000 years of prehistory, showing that ancient patterns of migration were just as complex as those in more recent times.

 

Co-author Prof David Reich, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, said the 51 ancient individuals comprised "a pretty substantial fraction of the known human skeletons in this period".

 

"Because we've studied so many ancient humans from Europe from the beginning of the modern human occupation, we're able to form a picture of how populations transformed over time."

 

"We see multiple, huge movements of people displacing previous ones," he added.

"During this first four-fifths of modern human history in Europe, history is just as complicated as it is during the last fifth that we know so much more about."

 

"A lot of amazing work was done [previously] to develop and use sophisticated methods to forensically piece apart patterns based on populations today," 

 

"But it's a little bit like trying to dissect the ingredients that go into the batter of a cake from the mixed up batter... how much flour, how much egg, how much sugar, how much butter.

 

"You could do it if you worked really hard and knew the chemistry. But what if you could go back to when they were adding in the butter, adding in the sugar, adding in the flour and measure how much was added in each time."