Listen to part of a lecture in an Archaeology classSo, one thing archeologists had pretty much agreed on, for a while now, is that the first migration of humans out of Africa to Europe, began about 42,000 years ago.We believe they first settled in southern and Western Europe and we knew this from evidence found at sites in those areas, artifacts that this culture left behind.These sites and these artifacts are referred to as Aurignacian.Now, during the Aurignacian era there was a surge of, well, creativity, uh, ingenuity in human behavior and skills and one of the defining characteristics of the era is representational art, art created to resemble something, sculptures of human figures, things like that.And, well, a few years ago some archeologists made an interesting discovery in Russia, in Kostenki.As you can see, Kostenki is south of Moscow, about 400 kilometers south.It’s on what is called the central East European Plain.Near this village is a prehistoric site or group of sites, actually.And these archeologists at Kostenki uncovered some artifacts that are clearly Aurignacian in origin.For instance, they found a carved head of an unfinished human figurine made of ivory, representational art, right?There were also personal ornaments and tools for digging, drilling, and cutting, all of them indicative of the Aurignacian era.And they were all found buried well below the level of previous discoveries of the same site.So we can be reasonably sure they are older.Not only that but there are reasons to believe that these artifacts are a good deal older than any that had previously been found much further west in what we have thought were the first Aurignacian settlements.You can see why this is important, now, because if these artifacts are indeed that old, then theories of a direct migration into western and southern Europe are called into question.Humans must have settled in the central East European Plain first, several thousands of years before ways of migration went west and south.That’s why it’s crucial to get the dating right.And our archeologists at Kostenki are convinced that the ivory head and other artifacts are over 42,000 years old, maybe as old as 45,000 years.Now, unfortunately that far back it gets harder to date things.We can’t expect to get an accurate reading from radiocarbon dating.The technology just isn’t that reliable at dating things over 40,000 years old.So how did they manage to date the Kostenki artifacts then?Well, right around that time, 40,000 years ago, there was a large volcanic eruption in what is now Italy.This volcano spewed out a layer of ash that settled onto the ground all across central and eastern Europe.And that layer serves as a pretty reliable time marker.The date of the eruption has been quite well established by means that I’m not going to get into right now.And guess what? The Kostenki artifacts, the ivory head and all, they were found well beneath this layer.All of this points to an Aurignacian settlement several thousand years older than any we found elsewhere in Europe.But it is somewhat perplexing in a way, I mean, the climate at Kostenki, we’re talking significantly colder at that time than areas to the west and south.Now I’m not saying these people couldn’t have handled such conditions.I mean, among the artifacts found were needles made from ivory and bone that were likely used for sawing. So, they were probably able to keep warm wearing animal hides.But we’d still like to be able to explain why a group of people would migrate to such a cold climate directly from the warm climate of Africa.Did they somehow prefer the cold weather?Well, we’ll leave that discussion for next time.