The first human presence in Europe dates back to 1.4 million years ago: this is attested by the traces of ancient artefacts found in the archaeological site of Korolevo, in western Ukraine, which were discovered in 1974 but have never been precisely dated until now.
This was achieved, thanks to a new method, by a group of researchers led by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, who published the results in the journal Nature.
The study not only sheds light on the arrival of the first humans in Europe, but also on the direction of their journey: it demonstrates, as long assumed, that the European continent was colonized from East to West.
To solve the mystery of the Korolevo site, among the most northern ones belonging to the Lower Paleolithic period (from 2.6 million to 300 thousand years ago), researchers led by Roman Garba used a method based on radioactive elements that form due to the interaction with cosmic rays, i.e. extremely energetic particles coming from space to which all celestial bodies are exposed, including Earth.
These radioactive atoms have an unstable nucleus and therefore tend to spontaneously transform into others at very regular times (a phenomenon known as 'radioactive decay'), which can then be measured to understand how much time has passed.
Thanks to this method, the authors of the study realized that the Korolevo stone tools are about 1.4 million years old.
The Ukrainian site is therefore located in a key position, also from a geographical point of view: it is located, in fact, halfway between the Caucasus region to the East, known for having been occupied by the first human beings already 1.8 million years ago, and that of South-Western Europe, inhabited around 1.2 million years ago.
The new study places Korolevo exactly in the center, demonstrating that European colonization followed a direction from East to West.
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