Recently discovered stone tools in Turkey suggest the presence of a bygone landmass that early humans may have used to cross into Europe.
For many of us, when we think of land bridges, we tend to think of the Bering Land Bridge (actually more of a swamp), which ancient humans traversed to reach North America from modern-day Siberia during the last Ice Age. But there may have been another, crucial stretch of land that aided early human migration—this time, far across the continent, on the Anatolian coast.
That’s the major new finding from a team of Turkish archeologists who have uncovered over 100 stone artifacts from ten different sites along the peninsula. They indicate that a land bridge, now underwater, had once existed between the western edge of Asia and Europe, enabling humans to move between these regions. If their theory holds, it would reveal a previously unknown chapter in the history of human migration at a critical moment in our evolution and development as a species.An unexplored prehistoric region
“This study explores the Paleolithic potential of Ayvalık, a region in western Anatolia that has remained largely unexamined in Pleistocene archaeology,” the researchers wrote in their study, which was published Friday in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology.
