Overview of the European Upper Palaeolithic: the Homo sapiens bone record.

Abstract

The European Upper Palaeolithic represents a period of special relevance during which anatomically modern human populations arrive and radiate throughout the continent, while Neanderthals are gradually assimilated. The territorial and demographic expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMH) into new areas that took place during this period and the increase in funerary ritual resulted in a numerous collection of well-preserved human remains previously unseen in Europe. This skeletal record complements the archaeological and environmental data, and allows the development of hypotheses about biological and cultural processes in Late Pleistocene populations. We conducted an extensive compilation of most of the Homo sapiens fossils documented in European Upper Palaeolithic chronologies to date with the aim to explore the palaeoanthropological record and their archaeological context. The database created in this study shows a considerably extensive record of uneven quality accumulated since the mid-19th century that reveals a progressive advance and consolidation of modern human populations in western Eurasia since 45,000 BP. Our results show that the Early Upper Palaeolithic record is dominated by isolated and disarticulated remains. With the onset of the Full phase of the Upper Palaeolithic, there was a considerable increase in skeletal remains and the expansion of funerary practices throughout Europe. Despite population contractions during the Last Glacial Maximum event, the human bone record is slightly larger in the Final phase of the Upper Palaeolithic.