When Asians finally colonised Europe

It turns out that one of the earliest colonial projects took a third time to get lucky. Not much talk about decolonisation gets talked about this one, but then when Homo sapiens managed to finally colonise Europe’s native population of Neanderthals around 42,000 years ago, the foreparents of today’s humans didn’t leave any surviving European adivasi to go on a decolonisation drive today. Or so scientists studying caves in the Rhone Valley excavations in France believe. Homo sapiens from western Asia had earlier made two attempts to colonise Europe over 12,000 years prior to their third successful campaign. Maybe they hadn’t earlier put their heart in the project, or maybe the Neanderthals had the equivalent of a no-visa policy for easterners at that time, globalisation – at least in the sense of free movement of human capital – was not in fashion even then.

At the crux of the discovery – still being contested – is tech transfer. Till now, Chatelperronian (named after the French village Chatelperron) tools, characterised by their slender blades and sophisticated designs, were thought by experts to be Neanderthal, a.k.a. European in origin. Typical Eurocentrism, says the latest diggers from France. Those tools were brought in by Homo sapiens from West Asia – quite like the Greeks co-opting Arab mathematics, medicine and astronomy a bit later.