Nuclear Physics Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Řež, Czechia.
Institute of Archaeology Prague, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia.
Nature. 2024 Mar;627(8005):805-810. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3. Epub 2024 Mar 6.
Stone tools stratified in alluvium and loess at Korolevo, western Ukraine, have been studied by several research groups since the discovery of the site in the 1970s. Although Korolevo's importance to the European Palaeolithic is widely acknowledged, age constraints on the lowermost lithic artefacts have yet to be determined conclusively. Here, using two methods of burial dating with cosmogenic nuclides, we report ages of 1.42 ± 0.10 million years and 1.42 ± 0.28 million years for the sedimentary unit that contains Mode-1-type lithic artefacts. Korolevo represents, to our knowledge, the earliest securely dated hominin presence in Europe, and bridges the spatial and temporal gap between the Caucasus (around 1.85-1.78 million years ago) and southwestern Europe (around 1.2-1.1 million years ago). Our findings advance the hypothesis that Europe was colonized from the east, and our analysis of habitat suitability suggests that early hominins exploited warm interglacial periods to disperse into higher latitudes and relatively continental sites-such as Korolevo-well before the Middle Pleistocene Transition.
位于乌克兰西部的科罗列夫（Korolevo）的沉积物和黄土中分层的石器，自 20 世纪 70 年代发现以来，已经被多个研究小组进行了研究。尽管科罗列夫对欧洲旧石器时代的重要性得到了广泛认可，但对最底层石器的年代限制仍未得到明确确定。在这里，我们使用两种埋藏年代测定方法，用宇宙成因核素报告了含有模式 1 型石器的沉积单元的年龄为 142 ± 0.10 万年和 142 ± 0.28 万年。据我们所知，科罗列夫是欧洲最早有可靠年代的人类存在的地方，填补了高加索地区（约 185-1.78 万年前）和西南欧地区（约 1.2-1.1 万年前）之间的时空差距。我们的发现推进了欧洲是从东部殖民的假说，我们对栖息地适宜性的分析表明，早期人类在中更新世过渡之前，就利用温暖的间冰期扩散到更高的纬度和相对大陆的地点，如科罗列夫。
