Evidence from personal ornaments suggests the existence of nine distinct cultural groups in Europe between 34,000 and 24,000 years ago, according to a new study published in Nature Human Behaviour.
The study, conducted by Jack Baker, Solange Rigaud, Daniel Pereira, Lloyd A. Courtenay, and Francesco d’Errico, focused on personal ornaments worn by European hunter-gatherers during the Gravettian technocomplex period. By analyzing a georeferenced dataset of these ornaments with multivariate and geospatial statistics, the researchers aimed to understand the mechanisms governing the relationship between genetic and cultural evolution.
The findings revealed that the variability of Gravettian ornaments could not be solely explained by isolation-by-distance. Instead, the analysis identified nine geographically discrete cultural entities across Europe, challenging previous assumptions about cultural homogeneity during this period. The results also highlighted a more complex pattern, with cultural entities located in areas not yet sampled by palaeogenetics and distinctive entities in regions inhabited by populations of similar genetic ancestry.
The researchers emphasized the importance of integrating personal ornament and biological data from other Palaeolithic cultures to further elucidate the complex narrative of population dynamics in Upper Palaeolithic Europe.
