Current view of the Ayvalík region, where the survey was conducted that may require rethinking migratory routes of the first humans.
Via, today submerged, will have functioned as a passage between Anatolia and Europe. Recent discovery of axes and other artifacts used by Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens forces to rethink migratory routes from our ancestors.
The first homo sapiens will have entered Europe through a land bridge, which connected the present Türkiye to the European continent during the ice age.
The conclusion is from a study on September 17 in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeologyand may force science to rethink the known migratory routes of our ancestors.
If so far it was thought that the first modern humans traveled from Africa and crossed the Middle East before they arrived at the Balkans, 140 artifacts of the Stone Age, found on the Aegean coast, near Ayvalikin the west of Türkiye, they point to a different way: a submerged road that will have functioned as a natural passage between Anatolia and Europe.
The ticket was only possible due to sea level descent in about 100 meters, caused by climate change during the Plistocenebetween 2.58 million and 11,700 years ago. The change exposed huge coastal plains, creating land corridors that facilitated the circulation of humans and animals.
The archaeologists team responsible for the new study toured ten locations in the region in June 2022, and found typical stone tools of different phases of paleolithic – including hand -oriented handcuffs, shaving and utensils, traditionally associated with neanderthals, but also with homo sapiens.
The location of these tools offers “direct evidence” that the area was part of a broader technological tradition that extended through Africa, Asia and Europe, the study co -author said, Göknur Karahanem .
Experts now want to do deeper excavations in Ayvalk that include stratigraphic analyzes, paleoan -environmental reconstructions, and absolute dating methods, which can confirm the fundamental role of a forgotten route upon the first humans to Europe.
“The results confirmed that Ayvalk – which had never been studied by its paleolithic potential – contains vital traces of primitive human activity,” says Karahan.
