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While attempting to find more genetic data from this time period, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany made an unexpected discovery. The Institute's Johannes Krause said: "We uncovered a completely unknown chapter of human history: a major population turnover at the end of the last Ice Age."
To try and piece together the facts of this 'lost period' the team analysed the mitochondrial genomes of 35 hunter-gatherers who lived in Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, the Czech Republic and Romania, from around 35,000 to 7,000 years ago. Three of these 35 people had DNA that belonged to 'haplogroup M', meaning they all were part of a single line of descent. This haplogroup is almost completely absent in modern Europeans, but it's very common among modern Asian, Australasian and Native American populations.
The absence of this haplogroup in places other than these led scientists to believe that non-African people dispersed gradually throughout history to colonise other parts of the world. However, the discovery that this haplogroup existed in Europe relatively recently instead suggests that all non-Africans quickly dispered from a single group at a specific time, which scientists believe occurred around 50,000 years ago.
This is a major discovery in itself, but the researchers' biggest surprise came when they found evidence that there was a major population turnover in Europe around 14,500 years ago, as the last Ice Age ended and the world began to warm.
As Adam Powell, another Max Planck Institute author explained: "Our model suggests that during this period of climatic upheaval, the descendants of the hunter-gatherers who survived through the last glacial maximum [Ice Age] were largely replaced by a population from another source."
The next step for the researchers is to construct a more comprehensive picture of European genetics from this period, in order to find out what could have caused this huge population change.
Could it be the mountains of the world? A refugarium for the previous world population that required the high elevations? That desperately needed to avoid the high sulfur from global volcano eruptions? The high carbon dioxide? [Link]
The only place the extreme dna mutagen carbon disulfide is naturallly found is on volcanic mouths.
Shall we consider the extensive world population resorted to high mountains and valleys to avoid stifling death? Evidence of humans living at extreme elevations is world wide. Consider the Chinese valleys with the 8 sided finger towers scientists estimate are 20,000 y old. Reference the Hot Valley of the Eastern Queen. The pre Inca stone megaliths of Peru. The inexplicable sea floor geometric structures.
One might suppose our current reluctance to view these as evidence of previous high attainment of humans is due to the fact we have not and may not ever reach the same technological pinnacle. To do so would be a violation of the Second Law. So should we all read Flowers for Algernon?