People in Ice Age Europe were more connected across distance than their scattered bones suggest. A University of Vienna team, with Pere Gelabert and Ron Pinhasi, sequenced three Gravettian individuals from Spain, France and Italy. They date to around 30,000 years ago. The woman from Isturitz in France carries mostly western European ancestry. Central and eastern European ancestry mixed in around 32,000 years ago. That means groups separated by much of the continent were exchanging genes well before the last glacial peak. The team also pulled human DNA straight from Spanish cave sediment, from a 22,000-year-old layer that held no bones at all. That alone is worth noting, because it opens sites where skeletons never survived. The authors argue one ancestry line persisted in southwestern Europe right through the glacial maximum. I expect a lot more archaeology to come from cave dirt rather than skeletons in the next few years.
Source: Science Advances, October 2026
