New DNA analysis has shown how humans sheltered from the Ice Age in warmer climates in Southern France and East Asia, where they remained until worst of the cold snap finally lifted 20,000 years ago.
It had been known there were two safe havens for humans as the Ice Age reached its peak 26,000 years ago -- the "Franco-Cantabrian" area, roughly coinciding with northern Spain and southern France, and the "Periglacial province" on the Ukrainian plains.
Now researchers claimed another group sat out the ice age in East Asia in the regions surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
This helps explain mitochrondial DNA in modern Europeans from two lineages, J and T, which originated in the Middle East. Until recently it was thought these lines migrated to Europe in the Neolithic age, approximately 9,000 years ago.
However, the new research suggests that humans belonging to the J and T haplogroups actually migrated to Europe 19,000 years ago -- allowing them to repopulate Europe when the Ice Age drew to a close, the Daily Mail reported.
Study researcher Dr Maria Pala of the University of Huddersfield said: "The end of the Last Glacial Maximum (Ice Age) allowed people to recolonise the parts of Europe that had been deserted and this expansion allowed increase of human populations."
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She believes using archaeogenetics like those used in the study has important lessons to teach humanity, as everyone came from a common group.
"It helps us to reevaluate the perception of our identity. We are highly focussed on identifying ourselves as Italians, British or whatever, but by analysing DNA we discover that originally, not such a long time ago, we came from a common source," she said.
The new research was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.