Ukraine may have been first part of Europe colonised by early humans
Korolevo, a site in Ukraine where early humans made stone tools, has been dated to 1.4 million years ago, suggesting early humans moved from Ukraine into the rest of Europe
By Michael Le Page
6 March 2024
Korolevo quarry in Ukraine, one of the oldest hominin sites in Europe
Roman Garba
Molecular dating has revealed that an area in Ukraine was occupied by humans 1.4 million years ago, making it one of the oldest hominin sites in Europe and possibly the oldest.
The site, at Korolevo in western Ukraine, has been studied since the 1970s. A large number of stone tools have been found buried in layers of sediment beside an outcrop of volcanic rock suitable to be made into tools.
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“This was like a magnet for bringing the people there, and they were camping nearby,” says Roman Garba at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
No bones have been found as the soil is too acidic to preserve them, he says, but it is assumed that the hominins were Homo erectus, a species that evolved around 2 million years ago and spread from Africa to Europe and Asia.
While it has been clear that early hominins were present at the Korolevo site repeatedly over hundreds of thousands of years, we haven’t known exactly when they were present. But Garba’s team has now dated the oldest layer containing tools to 1.4 million years ago, using a technique called cosmogenic nuclide dating.
