The First Europeans

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Europe’s earliest known humans lived over 1.2 million years ago. After initially roaming the plains of Iberia in small groups, they spread across the Pyrenees into the wider European continent. But for more than 100,000 years all traces of humans in these regions vanish. The question is…what happened?

In today’s episode of the Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Chris Stringer, and by Dr. Chronis Tzedakis and Dr Vasiliki Margari to explore the fate of these first Europeans and discover how a massive climate disaster drove some of Europe’s earliest humans to extinction.

This episode was produced by Joseph Knight and edited by Aidan Lonergan.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's 1.2 million years ago in the Iberian Peninsula, modern day Spain and Portugal.
0:16.5	Small groups of early humans are roaming around the landscape, slowly populating the European
0:21.1	continent. They are some of the first known humans in Europe, the first Europeans.
0:27.0	But around 1.1 million years ago, the record goes dark. All traces of humans in this area of the world
0:36.0	have vanishes for more than 100,000 years. Recently, a catastrophic answer for this lack of evidence has emerged, a massive event of climate change,
0:47.4	a continent-wide disaster, especially in Western Europe.
0:51.6	Temperatures call to such an extent that early humans
0:55.2	there were driven to extinction. It's amazing new research right at the heart of
1:01.2	this evolving story about the first to Europeans.
1:07.0	Top entailing this episode, we have an interview with Ancient's favorite and Human Evolution heavyweight, Dr. Chris Stringer,
1:14.4	C. B. from the Natural History Museum. Chris is here to highlight the current
1:19.3	evidence we have for early humans in Europe a million years ago, where on the continent this
1:24.3	evidence has been found, and what species of human these remains may well have
1:28.6	belonged to.
1:29.4	Sandwich between our chats with Chris, we have the story of this brand new climate change catastrophe discovery
1:36.4	with leaders of the project, Dr Kronis Sedakis, and Dr Vassiliki Margare,
1:41.6	who will talk us through the process of uncovering this massive climatic
1:45.0	calamity and what exactly appears to have happened.
1:49.0	I really do hope you enjoy, and to kick off the episode, here's Chris.
1:55.0	Chris, always a pleasure.
1:57.0	Great to have you back on the podcast.
1:59.0	It's a pleasure to be with you once again.
	...

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