Slata Co (Golden Horse) is a mountain with a cave system next to the Czech capital, Prague. A popular tourist destination. In the 1950s, a skull, some bones and some stone tools were found inside the cave.

Researchers have repeatedly examined these human remains using the carbon-14 method. But they have not been able to give reliable results. Only now has technology become so advanced that reliable dating has become possible.

This week, the magazine publishes Natural environment and evolution A new study. Among the authors is Thomas Higham of London, one of the world’s foremost experts on the carbon-14 method, and Johannes Krauss, a DNA researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Scientific History in Gene, Germany.

Showing their results The woman of our own kind Slataka lived at least 45,000 years ago.

This means that she was one of the first visitors to Europe. A pioneer. She was here long before the Neanderthals died, two thousand years before the arrival of the Uri Rignesians – a group that has long existed in Europe and is part of our origin that lives here today.

The female uri of Slatko was not one of the Rignesians. She is from another former immigration wave. A particularly small wave before the more active waves travel from the Middle East to Western Europe on one side and East Asia on the other. She was part of a wave of immigration, leaving no genetic evidence for those of us living in Europe today.

This also applies to the people of the Batjo Kiro cave in present-day Bulgaria.

I In May last year, DN wrote about Batjo Kiro and its inhabitants, When the first scientific results were published. Now the magazine is publishing Nature More comprehensive DNA analyzes of three individuals.

Among the authors Swedish DNA researchers Swande Pobo and Pontus Skogland are active at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and at the Francis Creek Institute in London.

People lived in Batjo Kiro about 45,000 years ago, and / minus 2,000 years. Thus they may be contemporary with the woman of Slataco.

Like her, they represent the early wave of immigration to Europe, and we have no descendants living here now. On the contrary, they had some genetic similarities with today’s Asians and Native Americans.

Like the woman in Slatoco, the Neanderthals came here thousands of years before they died.

Batjo Kiro in the cave Stone and jewelry tools have been found, including pendants of bear teeth. These ornaments are reminiscent of those found in Neanderthals in France and are thousands of years younger.

Jewelry is a strong argument in an ongoing debate among researchers who want to emphasize Neanderthals’ own ability to art, decoration, and symbolic thought, while others believe that jewelry is an imitation or remnant of people like us – even if they are found in Neanderthal caves.

New natural studies by Swante Pobo and Pontus Scogland include an updated DNA analysis of a man named Pestera Cuesse from a cave in Romania. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. Dating shows about 40,000 years, but it was done using old methods, which are probably less likely. In any case, it is clear that even the person in Pasteur Cus had Neanderthals among their ancestors, as did those in Batjo Kiro.

Meetings with Neanderthals seem to have been common in Europe 45,000 years ago, when the first pioneers of our kind lived here, just before they perished.