Ancient genomes show earliest Europeans survived worse Ice Age 36000 years ago

A new study has revealed that much of Europe was occupied almost continuously through one of the worst ever periods of climate change and the earliest Europeans suffered the worse ice age.

Scientists came to the findings after analysing the fossilised bones of a male hunter who lived around 36,000 years ago in western Russia and found that his DNA is similar to that of modern-day Europeans.

Cambridge University's Marta Mirazon Lahr, one of the research's co-authors, said that for 30,000 years, ice sheets came and went, at one point covering two-thirds of Europe and old cultures died and new ones emerged - such as the Aurignacian and the Grevettian - over thousands of years, and the hunter-gatherer populations ebbed and flowed.

The researchers said that they now know that no new sets of genes are coming in: these changes in survival and cultural kit are overlaid on the same biological background.

The DNA of the earliest known European has been dubbed the Kostenki genome and like the current residents of the content he shared a small percentage of genes with Neanderthals, which a period when Neanderthals and the first humans to leave Africa for Europe briefly interbred.