Volta
Culturec. 45,000 years ago

Modern humans in Europe

Also called: Cro-Magnons, Early European modern humans

Modern humans entered Europe about 45,000 years ago and lived alongside Neanderthals for several thousand years. About 36,000 years ago they painted animals in Chauvet Cave in France.

Horses, aurochs and rhinoceroses from the Chauvet Cave paintings — about 36,000 years old (museum replica)
Horses, aurochs and rhinoceroses from the Chauvet Cave paintings — about 36,000 years old (museum replica)

HTO · Public domain · Source

Human bones about 45,000 years old from Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria are the oldest directly dated modern humans in Europe; their genomes show Neanderthal ancestors only a few generations back.

Within a few thousand years modern humans spread across Europe, and Neanderthals disappeared about 40,000 years ago. The Upper Palaeolithic people who followed made needles, harpoons and flutes of bone and ivory and left paintings deep inside caves. Chauvet Cave in southern France, found in 1994, holds horses, lions, rhinoceroses and mammoths painted about 36,000 years ago.

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The map in c. 45,000 years ago

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Places
Bacho Kiro Cave, Chauvet Cave

Before and after

Earlier
c. 50,000 years ago Meeting the Neanderthals and Denisovans
Later
c. 40,000 years ago Modern humans in East Asia

Themes that include this event

  • The Human Journeyc. 300,000 years ago – 1300

    How modern humans, who appeared in Africa some 300,000 years ago, left Africa, met the Neanderthals, crossed the sea to Australia and the ice-age Bering land bridge to the Americas, and finally reached the remotest islands of the Pacific