By DPA
Washington : Settlers from Asia played a much larger role in Europe’s early population than previously thought, a new study has found.
According to a new investigation of human fossils millions of years old, Asian settlers may have even outnumbered Africans coming to Europe in that early period, says scientist Maria Martinon-Torres, who lead a team from the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain.
The conclusions of the report were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
The fossils analysed were of the first humans, known to walk upright, known as Hominini. Martinon-Torres’ team analysed the dental make-up of a number of Hominini species up to the arrival of the first Neanderthals in the latter stages of the Ice Age.
The analysis showed that the first European settlers – arriving anywhere from 1.8 million to 126,000 years ago – were Hominini with Asian dental imprints.
The team acknowledged that many of the first Eurasian settlers originally came from East Africa but the study nevertheless shows that migration to Europe was much more complex than previously thought, involving migrations from both the Asian and African continents.
Overall, there was very likely a large exchange of immigrants and settlers between all three continents, the study says.