The earliest modern human colonization of Europe

The expansion of modern humans over the planet is one of the most spectacular events in the course of human evolution. During millions of years, distinctive forms of hominins evolved in parallel and sometimes coexisted in the same regions. Between 60,000 and 40,000 y ago, one species expanded out of its African birthplace and replaced all others. The Neanderthals are the best-known archaic humans to go extinct at this time. In PNAS, Lowe et al. (1) resolve pending issues surrounding the mechanism of this evolutionary drama. Their study also fuels an increasing number of questions on the antiquity of the modern human colonization of Eurasia.