It started, like, geez. More than 45,000 years ago already.

And they were all Homo too.

Bones from German cave rewrite early history of Homo sapiens in Europe – Bone fragments unearthed in a cave in central Germany show that our species ventured into Europe’s cold higher latitudes more than 45,000 years ago – much earlier than previously known – in a finding that rewrites the early history of Homo sapiens on a continent still inhabited then by our cousins the Neanderthals.