Early humans left Europe for 200,000 years –

It appears that early humans, after living in Europe for some 300,000 years, left the continent after deciding it was far too cold.

Our early ancestors, known as Homo erectus, first came to Europe from Africa about 1.4 million years ago. At that time, Europe experienced a temperature drop of about 5 degrees Celsius. Like British vacationers today, our ancestors decided that Europe was much too cold and so they went back to warmer countries for about 200,000 years.

Humans effectively did not exist in Europe during this period and did not return until they had adapted to the cold. It is interesting to consider that much of the earth was uninhabited for so long by our ancestors.

“Early humans were not yet well adapted to cope with such extreme conditions,” he said. So Prof. Axel Timmermann told the BBC. “There is no direct evidence that they could even control the fire at this time. Therefore, the extremely cold and dry conditions over Europe and the associated lack of food must have greatly challenged human survival.”

Professor Nick Ashton of the British Museum argued that this cold could have caused evolutionary changes in our ancestors. “Europe was a laboratory for human adaptation,” he said. he said. “A more resilient species came back to Europe because they learned how to survive better, or it was another species that had more advanced behavior that allowed them to adapt.”

Our own human species, Homo sapiens, originated about 400,000 years ago, evolved in Africa and did not settle in Europe until about 42,000 years ago.