00:00Ice Age Europeans may have been far more connected than anyone thought.
00:04Researchers studied ancient DNA from rare human remains and cave sediments.
00:08The focus was the Gravedian culture, which spread across Europe 34,000 to 25,000 years ago.
00:15Earlier genetic studies suggested Eastern and Western groups stayed largely apart.
00:19Then came a woman who lived about 30,000 years ago in southwestern France.
00:24Her remains, from Isteritz Cave, gave the oldest genome-wide data from a modern human there.
00:30Most of her ancestry was Western European, but she also carried ancestry from Central and Eastern Europe.
00:36That mixing happened roughly 32,500 to 3,500 years ago.
00:41In northern Spain, the team pulled human DNA from bone-free cave dirt about 22,000 years old.
00:47It shows Western ancestry survived through the coldest part of the Ice Age.
00:52The study appears in Science Advances.
00:54Even then, people were linked across a continent.
00:57Disclosure.
00:58This video contains stock footage and content created or enhanced using AI-assisted tools.
Comments