Prehistoryc. 32,500–22,000 years ago · Isturitz Cave, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France
Ancient DNA of 30,000-year-old woman in France shows Ice Age contacts across Europe
Her genome, the oldest of a modern human from southwestern Europe, mixes western and eastern ancestry, and soil from a Spanish cave yielded human DNA without bones.
In brief 3 key points
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- Ice Age woman in France carried eastern European ancestry
- Eastern and western Gravettian groups were less isolated than thought
- Results rest on genomes and DNA recovered from cave sediment
A woman from Isturitz Cave in southwestern France, who lived around 30,000 years ago, carried ancestry from both western and eastern Europe. Her genome-wide data is the oldest from a modern human in southwestern Europe. With DNA from other caves, it shows that Ice Age people of the Gravettian culture were more connected than scientists believed.
A team led by the University of Vienna published the study in Science Advances. The first author is Pere Gelabert and the senior author is Ron Pinhasi. The work combines genome data from rare human remains with human DNA recovered from cave sediment. It includes genomic data from four new individuals of the Gravettian and Solutrean cultures.
Eastern ancestry in a western cave
The Gravettian culture spread across Europe from about 34,000 to 25,000 years ago. Artefacts from many sites point to wide contact between regions. Archaeologists have long argued for shared tools and trade across great distances. Earlier genetic work told a different story: it showed two fairly stable ancestry groups, one in the east and one in the west.
Most of the Isturitz woman's ancestry matched the western European line. She also carried ancestry from groups in central and eastern Europe. Genetic models date this mixing to between 32,500 and 31,500 years ago. A person from Ormesson in France, studied earlier, shows a similar signal.
Gelabert says eastern and western Europeans were less isolated than researchers had assumed. Together with archaeological finds, the results suggest that Isturitz was a meeting place for different groups.
Human DNA without human bones
The team also found long roots in the southwest. Genomes from Chufín Cave in northern Spain show that western ancestry stayed in the region for thousands of years.
At El Mirón Cave in Cantabria, no human bones or teeth turned up in a 22,000-year-old layer. The researchers still pulled enough human nuclear DNA from that layer to read ancestry. This is sediment DNA: genetic material preserved in the soil of a site rather than in a skeleton. They recovered about 14,000 genetic markers from the sample.
The DNA matched the Fournol lineage. It shows that this line lasted through the Last Glacial Maximum, from roughly 26,500 to 19,000 years ago. The result supports the idea that the Iberian Peninsula was a refuge during those years.
Pinhasi says sediment DNA gives researchers a way to recover genetic information when human remains are missing. It also lets them link archaeological layers to the ancestry of the people who lived at a site.
In southern Italy, the team studied Ostuni1b, a male foetus. He was likely the son of Ostuni1, a woman studied before. His father likely came from the same genetic group, but the parents were not closely related. The researchers see this as a sign of mating habits that kept inbreeding low.
Earlier models assumed steady local ancestry from the Aurignacian through to the Solutrean, about 24,000 to 19,000 years ago. The new results challenge those models. In the team's view, regional groups stayed rooted in place while genes still moved across long distances.
Gelabert's team now combines sediment DNA with protein studies. The aim is to trace the first expansions of modern humans across Europe, and their interactions with carnivores, at sites where organic remains are scarce.
Sources (1)
Peer-reviewed paperfrom University of Vienna
- Ancient DNA shows Ice Age Europeans stayed connected across long distances (Archaeology News)
Paper: Gelabert, P. et al., Science Advances (2026)
Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars
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