Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
Analysis of bones butchered by ancient human ancestors shows they represent the oldest direct evidence of hominins in Europe.
The bones are at least 1.95 million years old but could be up to 2.2 million years old. They may help build a picture of when early human ancestors left Africa and reached Europe and Asia, and the route they took. This has been an area of debate for decades.
The previous oldest evidence of hominins in Europe – stone tools found in Ukraine in 2024 – are just 1.4 million years old. In Dmanisi, Georgia – at the border of Europe and Asia – finds have been dated to 1.85–1.77 million years.
Elsewhere in Asia, evidence has been found of hominin activity predating Dmanisi.
The new finds come from Grăunceanu in southern Romania. The scientists identified 31 different animals including mammoth, multiple species related to cows, deer, giraffe, horse, rhinoceros, beaver, porcupine, ostrich, carnivore species, a large monkey and even a pangolin.
Cut marks that could only have been made by stone tools used by early hominins were found on the bones. High-precision uranium-lead radiodating showed the bones were at least 1.95 million years old.
Analysis showed the region was a temperate forest-steppe during the early Pleistocene epoch (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago). The researchers write in their paper published in Nature Communications that this shows “a wide habitat tolerance in even the earliest hominins in Eurasia”.
The researchers note that no stone tools or hominin remains have been found at Grăunceanu.
However, they refer to a site just 1.5km away, Dealul Mijlociu, which has preserved hominin stone tools which match the cut marks at Grăunceanu.
Though the stone tools can’t be dated with current information, they come from a layer of rock which has a similar assemblage of animals and are probably more recent in age than the bones at Grăunceanu.
“Our results, presented along with multiple other lines of evidence, point to a widespread, though perhaps intermittent, presence of hominins across Eurasia by at least 2.0 Ma [million years ago],” the authors write.
