The earliest record of human activity in northern Europe

• Published in: Nature Vol. 438; no. 7070; pp. 1008 - 1012
• Main Authors: Parfitt, Simon A., Barendregt, René W., Breda, Marzia, Candy, Ian, Collins, Matthew J., Coope, G. Russell, Durbidge, Paul, Field, Mike H., Lee, Jonathan R., Lister, Adrian M., Mutch, Robert, Penkman, Kirsty E. H., Preece, Richard C., Rose, James, Stringer, Christopher B., Symmons, Robert, Whittaker, John E., Wymer, John J., Stuart, Anthony J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 15.12.2005; Nature Publishing; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: Amino acids; Animal fossils; Animals; Applied geophysics; Archaeology; Climate; Colonialism; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Europe - ethnology; Exact sciences and technology; Fossils; Geologic Sediments - chemistry; Historic artifacts; History, Ancient; Human Activities - history; Human influences; Human remains; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Insecta - physiology; Internal geophysics; letter; Mammals - physiology; Marine and continental quaternary; multidisciplinary; Paleomagnetism; Rain; Science; Seasons; Surficial geology; Temperature; Time Factors; White people; England; United Kingdom; East Anglia; Great Britain; Suffolk England; Western Europe; Northern Europe; Prehistoric artefacts; Quaternary; lower Pleistocene; Europe; stratigraphic columns; paleogeography; paleoclimate; interglacial periods; colonization; discoveries; fossil man; paleomagnetism; migration; Cenozoic; Phanerozoic; lithostratigraphy; Pleistocene
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687; 1476-4687; 1476-4679
• DOI: 10.1038/nature04227

Written in stone A collection of stone tools from East Anglia has been dated at around 700,000 years old, making them the the earliest signs of human activity in northern Europe by about 200,000 years. Humans were present in sunnier southern Europe before 750,000 years ago, but until now there were no traces of human activity north of the Alps before half a million years ago. The flint artefacts found at Pakefield, near Lowestoft, extend human activity in Britain and the entire northern European landmass back to an antiquity we're more used to from southern Europe. The tools are from the well known Cromer Forest-bed Formation, which has yielded Ice Age fossils for over a century. But this find was notable as the 32 worked flints, including the scraper shown on the cover, were in a clearly datable stratigraphic context. Go to tinyurl.com/d2zko for video clips of the press conference announcing this discovery. The colonization of Eurasia by early humans is a key event after their spread out of Africa, but the nature, timing and ecological context of the earliest human occupation of northwest Europe is uncertain and has been the subject of intense debate 1 . The southern Caucasus was occupied about 1.8 million years (Myr) ago 2 , whereas human remains from Atapuerca-TD6, Spain (more than 780 kyr ago) 3 and Ceprano, Italy (about 800 kyr ago) 4 show that early Homo had dispersed to the Mediterranean hinterland before the Brunhes–Matuyama magnetic polarity reversal (780 kyr ago). Until now, the earliest uncontested artefacts from northern Europe were much younger, suggesting that humans were unable to colonize northern latitudes until about 500 kyr ago 5 , 6 . Here we report flint artefacts from the Cromer Forest-bed Formation at Pakefield (52° N), Suffolk, UK, from an interglacial sequence yielding a diverse range of plant and animal fossils. Event and lithostratigraphy, palaeomagnetism, amino acid geochronology and biostratigraphy indicate that the artefacts date to the early part of the Brunhes Chron (about 700 kyr ago) and thus represent the earliest unequivocal evidence for human presence north of the Alps.