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Southeastern Europe as a Route for the Earliest Dispersal of Homo Toward Europe: Ecological Conditions and the Timing of the First Human Occupation of Europe

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Paleoanthropology of the Balkans and Anatolia

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Abstract

In recent years, an increasing number of discoveries have supported the idea that human occupation of Europe took place earlier than expected, during the Villafranchian and significantly predating 1 Ma. Two hypotheses of dispersal toward Europe seem possible: (1) A direct dispersal from Africa with the earliest possible time frame being ca. 2.0–1.95 Ma; (2) A more recent dispersal, possibly from secondary nuclei of speciation in Asia Minor-Caucasus. The earliest “well documented” wave of Homo dispersal is probably related to the late Villafranchian/Epivillafranchian boundary, at ca. 1.3–1.2 Ma. Two routes of dispersal were possible: via the Bosphorus, or by a circuitous route around the Black Sea basin along the northern peri-Pontic coast. The time of the earliest human appearance in Europe could be related to conditions of increasing aridification and to a domination of open/mosaic landscapes, which roughly correspond to the ecological conditions experienced by African early Homo. The early Homo populations in Europe were likely not adapted to harsh climates and may have occupied only the southern-most areas of the continent.

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Acknowledgement

The author thanks the three anonymous reviewers, Katerina Harvati and Jana Makedonska, whose valuable comments considerably improved the manuscript.

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  1. National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1 Tzar Osvoboditel Boulevard, 1000, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Nikolai Spassov

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  1. Paleoanthropology, Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Katerina Harvati

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

    Mirjana Roksandic

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Spassov, N. (2016). Southeastern Europe as a Route for the Earliest Dispersal of Homo Toward Europe: Ecological Conditions and the Timing of the First Human Occupation of Europe. In: Harvati, K., Roksandic, M. (eds) Paleoanthropology of the Balkans and Anatolia. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0874-4_16

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