Research has so far produced no universally accepted conclusive explanation as to what caused the Neanderthal's extinction between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens later populated the entire continent during the Mesolithic, and advanced north, following the retreating ice sheets of the Last Glacial Maximum that spanned between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago. A 2015 publication on ancient European DNA collected from Spain to Russia concluded that the