New views on an old move: Hominin migration into Eurasia

Abstract

Current knowledge of hominin migration into Eurasia is severely biased by poor age constraints at many Lower Pleistocene sites. This contribution analyzes the current status of the chronology for the most important sites in the Circum-Mediterranean region, with an emphasis on those sites for which the archaeological remains (fossils and/or artifacts) are found in an unambiguous stratigraphic context. Taken together, current data shows an apparent occupation window of between 0.9 and 1.8 Ma for the bulk of Lower Paleolithic Sites in Western Eurasia. Noticeably, the oldest known sites, Dmanisi and Atapuerca TE9 (1.8 and 1.2 Ma respectively), are among the most geographically disparate sites in Eurasia. The time gap between these sites could be an artifact of the incomplete archaeological record, but it might also relate to distinct pulses of hominin migration into Eurasia. The uncertainty in existing ages prevents ascertaining whether the main climatic events in the Plio-Pleistocene match migration pulses of human dispersal into Eurasia.