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Populations genetically related to present-day Europeans first appeared in Europe at some point after 38,000-40,000 years ago, following a cold period of severe climatic disruption. These new migrants would eventually replace the pre-existing modern human ancestries in Europe, but initial interactions between these groups are unclear due to the lack of genomic evidence from the earliest periods of the migration. Here we describe the genomes of two 36,000-37,000-year-old individuals from Buran-Kaya III in Crimea as belonging to this newer migration. Both genomes share the highest similarity to Gravettian-associated individuals found several thousand years later in southwestern Europe. These genomes also revealed that the population turnover in Europe after 40,000 years ago was accompanied by admixture with pre-existing modern human populations. European ancestry before 40,000 years ago persisted not only at Buran-Kaya III but is also found in later Gravettian-associated populations of western Europe and Mesolithic Caucasus populations., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Evidence of the consumption of meat through hunting or scavenging by Early Pleistocene hominins is scarce, particularly in South Africa. Moreover, the interpretations of taphonomic evidence are subject to an important discussion commonly called the 'hunting-vs-scavenging debate.' Until today, only the Swartkrans Members 1-3 site has yielded a butchered bone assemblage large enough to permit reconstruction of carcass acquisition strategies by Early Pleistocene hominins in South Africa. This leaves an information gap between 1.4 and 1.0 Ma. Here, we provide the first evidence of meat consumption by hominins during this gap, based on the zooarchaeological study of the large mammal bone assemblage recovered from the Cooper's D site, South Africa. Based on skeletal part representation, our results show density-mediated attrition of bovid bones due to predepositional and postdepositional destruction. We argue that this attrition is the result of both abiotic (i.e., decalcification) and biotic (i.e., carnivore ravaging) processes. Bovid mortality profiles point out the involvement of ambush predators such as large felids. Bone surface modifications also indicate that the assemblage has been accumulated mostly by carnivores but with some hominin involvement as well. We observe all the stages of animal carcass processing (skinning, disarticulation, defleshing, marrow extraction) as well as the exploitation of a diversity of prey size classes at both Swartkrans Members 1-3 and Cooper's D. Thus, our study shows the importance of the Cooper's D bone assemblage for understanding Early Pleistocene hominin subsistence behaviors. Moreover, this article highlights the need for including long bone flake specimens in the analysis of large bone assemblages from South African caves to better understand the Early Pleistocene hominin bone damage record., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no competing interests to declare., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)