Ancient DNA upends European prehistory

[Retrograde]

12. The quoted piece cites groups in what is now Spain/France

and groups east of the Baltic, and actually says they did not look at any samples in what would have been a mixing zone in modern Poland and Belarus. That leaves a lot of area for these two groups to have met and mingled in.

Studying early modern humans is difficult because there aren't that many examples. We do know (or surmise) that they moved around since they managed to occupy Australia by about 40,000 years ago and all of the Americas by at the latest 14,000 years ago (and probably earlier), but the details of how they lived and how they interacted with each other are still somewhat vague. We get brief glimpses here and there, but I don't think there's much besides speculation.