DNA preserved in ancient cave sediments reveals how some Ice Age Europeans endured extreme cold, while genetic evidence from France uncovers unexpected connections across the continent.
A woman who lived in southwestern France around 30,000 years ago carried a genetic history that stretched far beyond her corner of Ice Age Europe. Most of her ancestry was western European, but part of it was related to populations in central and eastern Europe. Her DNA challenges the idea that ancient populations on opposite sides of the continent remained largely separated from one another.
For archaeologists, evidence of these distant connections is not entirely new. The Gravettian culture, which spread across Europe roughly 34,000 to 25,000 years ago, left behind evidence suggesting extensive contact between groups. Ancient DNA, however, seemed to tell a different story, pointing to relatively stable eastern and western ancestry groups. The two lines of evidence had been difficult to reconcile.
Now, an international research team led by the University of Vienna has found genetic evidence that helps bring those pictures together. In a study published in Science Advances, researchers combined new and previously published genomes with human DNA recovered from cave sediments, uncovering evidence of both long-distance genetic exchange and populations that endured in the same regions for thousands of years.
Eastern and western populations exchanged genes
The clearest evidence of those distant connections came from a woman whose remains were discovered at Isturitz Cave in southwestern France. Her remains yielded the oldest genome-wide dataset yet obtained from a modern human in southwestern Europe. Genetic modeling places the exchange between eastern and western populations around 32,500 to 31,500 years ago, before she lived.
“Our results show that eastern and western European populations were not as genetically isolated as previously assumed,” says first author Pere Gelabert, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. “Gene flow across such large distances adds a new dimension to our understanding of how Gravettian populations were connected.”
She was not the only person to carry evidence of these connections. A previously studied individual from Ormesson, France, showed a similar genetic signal. When considered alongside archaeological findings, the results also strengthen the possibility that Isturitz served as a meeting place for different groups, although the DNA cannot reveal exactly how those encounters occurred.
Western European ancestry survived the Ice Age
Yet contact across Europe did not necessarily mean that established populations disappeared or were replaced. In northern Spain, researchers uncovered another part of the story: western European ancestry persisted for thousands of years, including through some of the harshest conditions of the last Ice Age.
Genomic evidence from Chufín Cave points to this long-term continuity. At El Mirón Cave in Cantabria, the researchers went a step further, recovering human genetic information without relying on bones or teeth. A sediment layer dating back approximately 22,000 years contained enough human nuclear DNA to identify the genetic ancestry of people who had occupied the cave, despite the absence of human skeletal remains in that layer.
The DNA revealed that western European ancestry had persisted through the Last Glacial Maximum, when Ice Age conditions were particularly severe. Together with the evidence from Chufín, this supports the idea that the Iberian Peninsula served as a refuge where human populations endured during a period of extreme cold.
“Sedimentary DNA allows us to recover genetic information from periods where human remains are missing,” says senior author Ron Pinhasi, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna, whose team led this study. “This gives us a way to connect archaeological layers with the genetic ancestry of the people who occupied a site.”
Ancient family offers clues to inbreeding avoidance
In southern Italy, the team examined a different aspect of ancient population life through the remains of Ostuni1b, a male fetus who was most likely the son of a previously studied woman known as Ostuni1. Genetic analysis suggests that his father probably belonged to the same population as his mother, yet the parents were not closely related. The researchers interpret this as a possible sign of mating practices that helped prevent high levels of inbreeding, even among people who shared a common genetic background.
These findings offer a more complicated picture of Ice Age Europe than one divided into isolated eastern and western populations. Genetic ancestry could endure in a region for thousands of years while connections between populations extended across much greater distances. The evidence suggests that remaining part of an established regional population did not necessarily mean being cut off from people elsewhere.
Gelabert’s team is now extending this research by combining sedimentary DNA with advanced proteomic analyses, which examine proteins, to investigate the earliest expansions of modern humans across Europe. The approach may also help researchers understand how these populations interacted with carnivores at archaeological sites where organic remains are too scarce to provide a clear record of the past.
Reference: “Early Gravettian genomic data from Western Europe reveal population movements before the LGM” by Pere Gelabert, Susanna Sawyer, Vanessa Villalba-Mouco, Olivia Cheronet, Victoria Oberreiter, Diego Gárate, Christian Normand, Lawrence G. Straus, Manuel R. González Morales, Igor Gutiérrez-Zugasti, David Cuenca-Solana, Joëlle Darricau, Henry de Lumley, José-Miguel Tejero, Mareike Stahlschmidt, Thomas Higham, Maddalena Giannì, Laura G. van der Sluis, Carla Gómez-Montes, Miriam Ibáñez-Herranz, Michelle Hämmerle, Brina Zagorc, Florian Exler, Florian Brück, Stefan Franz, Fernanda Tenorio Cano, Kristin Stewardson, Lijun Qiu, Ana B. Marín-Arroyo, Michaela Lucci, Alessia Nava, Francesco Genchi, Donato Coppola, Chiara La Marca, Alfredo Coppa, David Reich and Ron Pinhasi, 23 October 2026, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh6128
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