The earliest evidence of clever people in Europe

Archaeologists uncovered various stone tools, animal bones, ornaments and fossils of clever people inside the Bacho Kiro cave.

The fragments of bones and artifacts, dating back about 45,000 to 47,000 years ago, are the earliest known evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens in Europe, the scientists said. a report on 11/5.

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The Bacho Kiro cave contains the earliest evidence of elves in Europe. (Photo: Science News).

Previously, the oldest H. sapiens fossils on the "old continent" aged between 41,500 and 45,000 years. The new discovery at the Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria strengthens the theory that smart people from Africa migrated to the Middle East some 50,000 years ago, then quickly set foot in Central Asia and Europe.

With the exception of an intact molar, the fossil bones found at Bacho Kiro are too fragmented to identify by appearance. The team said it extracted proteins from fossils and analyzed how their building blocks were organized. Results showed that mitochondrial DNA, obtained from six of the seven bone fragments, belonged to H. sapiens.

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Tools made from animal bones and chains made from bear teeth (lower row). (Photo: Science News).

This evidence is the answer to the question: who created a series of artifacts unearthed at Bacho Kiro, including stone or animal bone tools and a necklace made from bear teeth. It is our intelligent human being, not the Neanderthals as previously thought, said research leader Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute of Anthropological Evolution.

Neanderthals lived in Europe before H. sapiens for hundreds of thousands of years. Many studies suggest that the two species mate for about 8,000 years before the Neanderthals became extinct.

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Clever stone tools excavated in Bacho Kiro cave. (Photo: Reuters)

"There are arguments about what Neanderthals have gone through, including the possibility that they were wiped out by our species," Hublin said. "In my view, the Neanderthals disappeared from Europe because of competition and breeding with the H. sapiens. However, this did not happen overnight, but rather a process that lasted for thousands. year".

"The first smart people who arrived in Europe brought new behaviors and interacted with the local Neanderthals. They not only exchanged genes but also shared some cultural aspects. The sapiens found in Bacho Kiro cave have a lot in common with the later Neandertals produced by the late Neandertals in Western Europe, " Hublin added.

To date, more than 11,000 pieces of fossilized animal bones - belonging to 23 species of wild animals such as bison, deer, goats and bears - have been found inside the Bacho Kiro cave. They save the way our ancestors hunted and used tools to slaughter animals. Details of the study have been published in Nature .