Modern settlements in Europe

After the disappearance of the last Neanderthals in Europe, there was a relatively rapid succession of techno-complexes within which technical innovations accumulated. Together, these phases represent the European Upper Paleolithic. In lithic production, we see the recurrent use of blades and flakes. These were used to make composite objects, notably throwing weapons. The Upper Paleolithic saw the systematic use of hard animal materials, sometimes combined with flint. Objects with stereotyped shapes characterize the successive cultural phases. Bone, reindeer antler and ivory are also used to produce objects for adornment and animal representations, more rarely human representations. The images of a sometimes real, sometimes imaginary world that also appear in parietal art are the expression of shared beliefs that form the cement of human societies. Demographically speaking, the populations of the European Upper Palaeolithic were strongly impacted by the development of the last glacial cycle. This culminated around 21,000 years before present. It corresponded to a period of human abandonment of many areas north of the Alps. Throughout the Upper Paleolithic, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA present in the genome of modern populations was reduced, mainly through natural selection.