At Isturitz Cave in southwestern France, a woman who lived about 30,000 years ago carried clues to connections spanning Ice Age Europe. Her DNA links ancestry from the west of the continent with people from central and eastern Europe, revealing that distant groups mixed earlier and more widely than researchers had thought.
The findings, published in Science Advances by an international team led by the University of Vienna, offer a fresh view of people associated with the Gravettian culture. This culture flourished across Europe roughly 34,000 to 25,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence had hinted that its communities stayed in touch over long distances, but earlier genetic studies suggested that eastern and western populations were mostly separate.
The Isturitz woman’s remains yielded the oldest genome-wide genetic dataset yet obtained from a modern human in southwestern Europe. Most of her ancestry was linked to western European populations, but part came from people associated with central and eastern Europe. Genetic modeling placed the mixing between these populations at about 32,500 to 31,500 years ago.
The researchers found a similar genetic signal in an individual previously studied at Ormesson, France. Together with archaeological discoveries, these results raise the possibility that Isturitz Cave was a place where people from different groups met. The findings do not show exactly how often people traveled or what brought them together, but they make clear that ancestry crossed great distances.
The study also points to survival and continuity in the southwest. At Chufín Cave in northern Spain, evidence suggests that ancestry associated with western European populations remained in the region over a long span of time. To investigate people who left no identifiable bones, the team analyzed DNA preserved in cave sediment—a method that can recover tiny traces of genetic material from soil and other deposits.
At El Mirón Cave in Cantabria, Spain, researchers found human nuclear DNA in a sediment layer about 22,000 years old. There were no human bones or teeth in that layer, yet the DNA provided enough information to identify the ancestry of people who had occupied the site. Senior author Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna said sediment DNA can connect archaeological layers with the ancestry of their past inhabitants.
The results indicate that western European ancestry persisted in the region through the Last Glacial Maximum, when Ice Age ice sheets reached their greatest extent. That adds support to the idea that the Iberian Peninsula, now home to Spain and Portugal, was an important refuge for people during some of the coldest conditions of the Ice Age.
Together, the genetic traces from a woman’s remains and from cave soil show how much can be learned even when the human story is incomplete. They suggest that Ice Age Europeans were not simply divided into distant, isolated groups: some shared ancestry across the continent, while communities in southwestern Europe endured through severe climate change. As researchers study more remains and sediment, they may be able to trace those connections across still more places and periods.