Talk:Cro-Magnon

58,000 year old aboriginal DNA contradicts the article

it is thought that aborigines and papuens diverged from other humans 58,000 years ago... This article's text 37,000 years as being the end of the first wave of humans. Crew Magnum is a relic early science which is not used in english anthropology any more. that should be mentioned Lifeinthetrees (talk) 05:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, this must be mentioned in the opening. I would do it is i could find a valid scientific reference for the depreciation of the term. Sperxios (talk) 08:25, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Thought on cro magnum man

Was curious about cromagnum man and some ended up with what seemed a preoccupation of sexuality and the assumed roles. What I couldn’t help but notice especially in the sense of hiarchy hunter gatherer was that the female would have been almost continuously pregnant and limited during a good deal of the time and also put at greater risk. It seemed this topic had a preoccupation with references from feminist. Not that are differences were mutually beneficial, instead there seemed to be a lot of effort to as they say. say it ain’t so. 2600:1700:14B0:9A60:F109:B46D:35D1:3DA8 (talk) 06:00, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello and thanks, but your not being very specific in either intent or reason. Is this a request; do you have sources / areas of research you think should be emphasised? Ceoil (talk) 06:46, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Source?

"The earliest Cro-Magnon specimens also exhibit some features that are reminiscent of those found in Neanderthals. The first Cro-Magnons would have had darker skin tones than most modern Europeans; natural selection for lighter skin would not have begun until 30,000 years ago." What is the source for this claim? Also, the paragraph this is from and the next two paragraphs have no sources cited for anything in those three paragraphs. 76.202.192.102 (talk) 20:10, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

See section Cro-Magnon#Physical_attributes which has the sources for this piece of information. The lede section summarizes the entire article and is not required to have a source for every single statement as long as it is sourced in the respective section of the main text of the article. –Austronesier (talk) 07:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Etymology

Sorry if I missed it but I wasn't able to find anything about the origin for usage of the term 'Cro-Magnon'. It appears that it might have been the name of a place in France. But even after checking Cro-Magnon rock shelter, it just describes itself as a "site" where Cro-Magnon men, the topic of this article, were found. But I want to know, was the term 'Cro-Magnon' already used in France to refer to the place where, later in human history, discoveries were made? Like was the cave in the Cro-Magnon river valley or on Mount Cro-Magnon or something? Or, was the term 'Cro-Magnon' coined by someone at the time of the discovery? Thanks! Gibson Flying V (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

it's in the Cro-Magnon rock shelter section, "The site is called Abri de Cro-Magnon (Cro-Magnon rock shelter), now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Abri means 'rock shelter' in French, cro means 'hole' in Occitan, and Magnon was the landowner" Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 18:49, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

"First early modern humans (Homo sapiens) found in Europe and Siberia"

This statement is not current, and the rest of the article relies on it to the point that I'm not sure how it can be modified without a lot of rewrite.

To date:

1. Apidima 1 is clearly sapiens and dated to around 200kya (Harvati)
2. Neanderthal femur from HST cave in Germany has a sapiens mtDNA lineage with a ~270ka divergence (Cosimo Posth et al 2017)
3. Vindija Neanderthals have a sapiens introgression dating to around 200ka, from a sapiens ghost lineage (many people have published on this, most have a nice looking phylogeny showing the extinct sapiens lineage 200-250ka).

So it is very clear that there was a previous sapiens migration into Europe which was at least somewhat established, and then went extinct prior to Cro-Magnon arrival (or, CM completely wiped them out with zero admixture as no living humans contain signatures from this group outside of it making it into them through the Neanderthal admixture). This culture was not ethnically or culturally the same as Cro-Magnon and I don't know how much they should be discussed here, but lots of content here currently relies and builds on the "first sapiens" thing. Mausfield (talk) 08:29, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

For context, this is not WP:OR, the ~200kya sapiens ghost lineage is a widely discussed topic in the last 10 years. Any paper with a phylogeny of this family (sapiens, neanderthals, and denisovans) since then wil have this extinct sapiens population contributing about ~5% to the Eurasian Neanderthal genome about 208-250kya. So it is very much a well-established and relevant piece of the puzzle. There is a growing body of anthropologists who think this population was responsible for Neanderthals achieving the controlled use of fire and perhaps other cultural trappings. Mausfield (talk) 01:23, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

None of these are as concrete as you're portraying them. I'm not sure how you're getting the eroded Apidima skull fragment is "clearly" a modern human skull. If the 270kya Neanderthal femur indeed has a modern mtDNA trace your claim would assume that this mtDNA originated in modern humans and also that Neanderthals populations were incapable of moving between Germany and the Levant themselves (in other words only modern human populations could've traveled so far over such a long period of time). Same with Vindija, assumes these Neanderthals never moved for hundreds of thousands of years and needed modern humans to get there for such introgression to occur. This is not to say that modern humans only colonized Europe once, famous example is the Romanian Oase 2 which has no living descendent but this is not so ancient. Also there is no evidence to suggest the introgression from the 200,000 year old ghost lineage happened outside of Africa Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 02:13, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

"Also there is no evidence to suggest the introgression from the 200,000 year old ghost lineage happened outside of Africa"

You seem to be confused on this point, but to avoid making this a "me vs you" thing, I'll just add that every paper published on this topic disagrees with you, and leave it at that.

"If the 270kya Neanderthal femur indeed has a modern mtDNA"

This is a 10 year old piece of evidence and I would strongly suggest being up to date on this topic if you want to debate it. Mausfield (talk) 22:11, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

To put a head on it, though: what you're saying also fundamentally makes no sense with the current evidence because the 200kya+ sapiens introgression into Neanderthals contains sequences present in modern humans only from Neanderthal introgression, and entirely endogenously absent from modern Africans. So you would need population genetic support of a large (20k+ Ne), 250kya+ sapiens lineage that existed in Africa with *zero* admixing to any other African sapiens population, privately admixed with Neanderthals but somehow not Denisovans even though they split in Eurasia. Mausfield (talk) 22:22, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

A good summary on this from Svante Pääbo and Hugo Zeberg. See Fig 1. The purple arrow pointing towards the sapiens branch is the Neanderthal contribution to Cro-Magnons from the ancestor of Vindija and El Sidron after that ancestor diverged from Altai, this is where living people with Eurasian heritage get their Neanderthal sequences. The earlier, rightwards blue arrow is the 200+kya introgression of this extinct sapiens offshoot (which diverged either prior to the African sapiens expansion or early in that process, see Fig 3 in Kuhlwilm et al's original paper on this from 2016) into the ancestors of Altai and Vindija Neanderthals but after the divergence with Denisovans. Some Cro-Magnons got pieces of those extinct sapiens introgressions back during their admixture, and we can identify those because they are otherwise absent from every living human. The only alternative to this is that this population was some intermediary after the divergence from the archaic branch and before sympatric move into sapiens. Which.... I've never heard anyone say.

It would suffice to add something like "the earliest surviving sapiens population to establish in Europe" or something to that effect. Oase 2 is a good illustrative example of local extinction of lineages within population substructure but that individual still descended from same African sapiens metapopulation that all living non-African ancestry derives from. That is in contrast to this ~200kya group, because they left no surviving lineages, the only genetic remnants of it are its footprint in Neanderthal genomes, which some of us carry from the 46-55kya archaic admixtures. Mausfield (talk) 06:40, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree that "First early modern humans (Homo sapiens) found in Europe and Siberia" is something we cannot say anymore with the same amount of confidence as let's say 10 years ago. Catching up with the discussion above, I nevertheless want to clarify a few things that lack a bit of nuance and precision:

1. It looks like there is indeed an emerging consensus that Apidima 1 is H. sapiens, even if there have been a number of dissenting voices that classify it as Neanderthal (one is cited in this article). Note that two sources (Cole et al. (2026) and Grün et al. (2023)) discussing these proposals observe that it requires to extend the width of morphological variation for Neanderthals beyond what has been hitherto observed, in order for Apidima 1 to fit in as a Neanderthal, whereas OTOH, Apidima 1 falls well within the range of H. sapiens. Yet, both Grün et al. (2023) and Cole et al. (2026) conclude their discussion of Apidima 1 with almost the same cautious words: "If Apidima is indeed a[n early] H. sapiens...", so "clearly sapiens" is probably still premature.
2. The HST femur is not 270kya (and @Mausfield hasn't said that). It is hard if impossible to date, but Posth et al. place it among the late Neanderthals. 270kya is just their lower limit for the date of the ingression of sapiens mtDNA into HST.
3. The existence of sapiens admixture in late Neanderthal individuals only provides evidence for the admixture event itself, but not for the actual location where it might have taken place. An in situ admixture with subsequent immobility of more that 100,000 years up to the time of Vindija is definitely not the default assumption. Li et al. (2024) explicitly address this question in reference to Apidima 1: "Of particular relevance is the Apidima 1 fossil from the Apidima Cave in southern Greece that dates to ~210 ka, which show that these early out-of-Africa diasporas were not confined to the Levant, but in some cases covered substantial distances. Although it is difficult to speculate on where ths first wave of H → N admixture occurred, sequencing more Neanderthal genomes that span additional points in space and time would be fruitful in addressing this question" (emphasis added).

That said, I have no good idea about how to the change the current overconfident phrasing. I'm fine with "the earliest surviving sapiens population to establish in Europe" at this point. –Austronesier (talk) 12:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. Just for clarification, I'm not relying on the existence of the H→N event as evidence of location, I'm relying on what divegences occure before and after it to rule out locations. I don't want to bludgeon, so I'll just say that the claim of this happening in Africa requires me to believe half a dozen things which are each individually not credible for different reasons. That the other popuation here is sapiens is not controversial: the mtDNA and chrY lineages that introgress into Neanderthals 370-220kya are very clearly sapiens, because sapiens is what we call the human lineage which isn't Neanderthals and Denisovans. Those haplotypes are also extinct in living humans, outside archaic ancestry. And, I will note that its not like Apidima was some gigantic sea change, it's only about 20k older than Levantine sapiens, and I will here highlight one fact: every single human population who lived in the Levant contined expanding into Europe and Asia. So we now also have to argue that this H in the H→N was the first to fail. And that Apidima is something else entirely. Etc.

I just cannot fathom how someone can even entertain Cro-Magnon as the first sapiens in Eurasia at this point, let alone feel highly confient in it, other than just by not having an up to date reading in the literature.

This figure from Josh Akey's blog post is helpful is seeing how the time point of the H→N event actually does exlcude Africa as an option. When Li et al mention the fuzziness of location (which is absolutely correct), they're talking about "where in Eurasia". Not "where on the planet". Mausfield (talk) 09:15, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

every single human population who lived in the Levant contined expanding into Europe and Asia: exactly. That's why the sapiens ingression in the genome of late Neanderthals cannot serve as a piece of positive evidence for a sapiens presence in Europe. The ingression might just as well have occurred in the Levant (FWIW: who actually argues for it to have taken place in Africa?). So the only good piece of evidence for an early OoA incursion into Europe is the fossil record, viz. Apidima 1.

To focus on the matter of the questionable opening sentence of the article: which study covering the H → N ingression expicitly makes a case for Europe (and the Levant) as the location of where this ingression occurred? If there is, it will be highly relevant for improving this article. If not, we should not draw conclusions from studies that the authors themselves don't make. –Austronesier (talk) 16:51, 27 July 2026 (UTC)