The First European

An article by Steve Connor of the Independent documents the attempts to put flesh on a 35 ky BP hominid from Carpathia. According to the article:

The artist's reconstruction – a face that could be male or female – is based on the partial skull and jawbone found in a cave where bears were known to hibernate. The facial features indicate the close affinity of these early Europeans to their immediate African ancestors, although it was still not possible to determine the person's sex.

Richard Neave, the forensic artist who reconstructed the facial features in this clay model, based his assessment on a careful measurement of the bone fragments and his long experience of how the soft tissues of the face are built around the bones of the skull.

The interesting thing is that the Aurignacian tools, which are the first modern-associated tools in Europe date to around 43 ky BP from Bacho Kiro. Neat!