By Yana Rudenko
In the Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia, stone tools around 1.4 million years old have been found at the Palaeolithic site of Korolevo near the village of the same name.
This means that humans of the species Homo erectus (upright man) apparently lived in Europe much earlier than previously assumed. Thanks to this discovery, the scientists were able to confirm the theory of the migration of various Homo erectus species that came to Europe from the east and spread westwards, probably along the Danube river valleys. This is the result of a study published in the scientific journal Nature.
A Czech-Ukrainian team of scientists has discovered that these stone tools are the oldest Homo erectus artifacts found in Europe to date, and their age was determined for the first time in archaeology using cosmogenic nuclide dating. This method of age determination examines how long stones or soil were exposed to certain radioactive radiation from space.
Previously, the oldest evidence of the first humans in Europe was found in Atapuerca (Spain) and in the Vallonne cave in southern France, dating back between 1.1 and 1.2 million years. Researchers in South Georgia have determined the age of the bones of prehistoric humans to be 1.8 million years. It is therefore quite possible that they came from the coastal and inland areas of the eastern Mediterranean, as stone tools similar to the Ukrainian ones have also been found in the Zarqa Valley in Jordan. They are between two and two and a half million years old. The researchers have come to the conclusion that prehistoric humans could have arrived in the area that is now western Ukraine either via the Caucasus or Asia Minor. The team suspects that a group of early humans could have migrated from there up the Danube to Europe. However, there are not yet enough finds of prehistoric humans in Europe to establish a reliable chronology.
The archaeological site in Korolevo was discovered in 1974 and has been explored ever since. It is located near the Tisza, a tributary of the Danube, and is considered to be the oldest archaeological site in Ukraine. The Ukrainian archaeologist Vitalii Usik, who used to work at the Archaeological Museum in Kiev and is now a researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, was involved in the study, as was the lead author Roman Garba. He emphasizes to tuenews INTERNATIONAL that “the dating method was in fact used for the first time in the direct dating of stone artefacts. This is the core of our collaboration with our Czech colleagues. The results of the dating formed the basis for further conclusions about the earliest presence of Homo erectus in Europe.” Usik has also worked with the archaeological collections of the University of Tübingen.
Read more about the research in this article: https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/ukraine-bislang-aeltester-hinweis-auf-fruehmenschen-in-europa-entdeckt-a-41ff9b05-5ab7-4839-bf8b-aaf0aae9a394
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Panoramablick von Gostry Verkh auf den Steinbruch Korolevo mit der Ausgrabungsstätte Korolevo II (hinter dem Gewässer). Foto: Roman Garba
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