A Misplaced Land Bridge May Rewrite the Story of Humanity

Here is what you’ll study if you learn this story:

• A brand new research finds compelling proof of a beforehand unknown land bridge that when linked western Anatolia and southeastern Europe.
• Archaeologists discovered 138 stone instruments off the coast of Ayvalık, Turkey, dated from varied durations all through the Pleistocene, however probably the most unbelievable discovery included flake instruments within the Mousterian custom.
• This new land bridge might rewrite the story of hominin migration within the area, as consultants beforehand believed that people migrated by the Balkans or the Levant to succeed in Europe.

---

The history-shaping energy of land bridges can’t be overstated. The Bering Land Bridge linked northwestern North America with Siberia, rising in the course of the tail finish of the final Ice Age and certain offered Homo sapiens entry to the western hemisphere. The Gibraltar Land Bridge kicked off the Messinian Salinity Crisis by utterly drying out the Mediterranean. Even land bridges that also exist right now—the Panama Isthmus is solely 4 million years previous—have eternally altered the course of historical past.

Now, scientists from three universities primarily based in Turkey have discovered a beforehand unknown land bridge that linked western Anatolia to southeastern Europe, serving as an important migration route for 2 hominins: Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. This route would circumvent the standard migration sample—by the Balkans and the Levant—that scientists beforehand believed initially introduced people to Europe. The analysis workforce found this hidden land bridge by uncovering 138 stone instruments throughout 10 websites off the coast of Ayvalık, Turkey, simply east of Lesbos, Greece. The outcomes of the research had been revealed within the journal Island and Coastal Archaeology.

“Our archaeological discovery has unveiled that this now-idyllic region once potentially offered a vital land bridge for human movement during the Pleistocene era—when sea levels dropped and the now-submerged landscape was briefly exposed,” Göknur Karahan, a co-author of the research from Hacettepe University, stated in a press statement. “These findings mark Ayvalık as a potential new frontier in the story of human evolution, placing it firmly on the map of human prehistory.”

The final Ice Age, which spanned the complete Pleistocene epoch (from 115,000 to 11,700 years in the past) introduced with it decrease sea ranges, as an enormous quantity of water was locked up inside glaciers and ice sheets. This brought on the formation of assorted land bridges (together with the aforementioned Bering Land Bridge) and fully new landmasses, similar to Doggerland in what’s now the North Sea. This new land bridge would’ve briefly emerged in a lot the identical approach, reworking the present islands off the coast of Ayvalık into a completely new territory.

“In all these periods, the present-day islands and peninsulas of Ayvalık would have formed interior zones within an expansive terrestrial environment,” Kadriye Özçelik, one other co-author of the research from Ankara University, stated in a press assertion.

This area of the world isn’t notably well-known for its paleolithic discoveries as a result of shifting geomorphology of the Aegean, which may impression the preservation of Pleistocene stays. Despite these challenges, the authors discovered what they name “Levallois technologies,” which are sometimes seen in stone instruments from varied Pleistocene durations. However, probably the most fascinating discover had been Levallois-style flake instruments that comply with the Mousterian custom, which is often linked to the Middle Pleistocene (from round 774,100 to 129,000 years in the past). These instruments have beforehand been related to each early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

“These large cutting tools are among the most iconic artifacts of the Paleolithic and are instantly recognizable even today, so they are a very important find,” Karahan stated in a press assertion. “The presence of these objects in Ayvalık is particularly significant, as they provide direct evidence that the region was part of wider technological traditions shared across Africa, Asia, and Europe.”