A new model for the evolution of the human Pleistocene populations of Europe

Abstract

This paper proposes a new theoretical model to explain the evolution of the genus Homo in Europe during the Early and the Middle Pleistocene in the light of the latest human discoveries in Europe. This model is contextualized within a biogeographical framework in order to assess its environmental feasibility. After the first Out of Africa hominin dispersal, the colonization of Europe may be the result of several hominin migrations originated from a central area of dispersals of Eurasia (CADE), located in the Levantine Corridor and continuously inhabited by a “source population”. Evolutionary changes occur in the source population and are reflected in the demes that migrate to the east and the west of the vast Eurasian continent, but can also occur in their “descendants” and not always at a species level. Populations in the central (CADE) and peripheral areas are intermittently connected, due to the existence of geographic and climatic barriers, possibly with climate being the driving force of the populations expansions, contractions and local extinctions. Populations with a recent common origin and that occupied the same territory might have interbred. During most of the Pleistocene, the human occupation of Europe depended upon the non-linear recruitment of populations from the CADE.