Stone tools stratified in alluvium and loess at Korolevo, western Ukraine, have been studied by several research groups1-3 since the discovery of the site in the 1970s. Although Korolevo's importance to the European Palaeolithic is widely acknowledged, age constraints on the lowermost lithic artefacts have yet to be determined conclusively. Here, using two methods of burial dating with cosmogenic nuclides4,5, we report ages of 1.42 ± 0.10 million years and 1.42 ± 0.28 million years for the sedimentary unit that contains Mode-1-type lithic artefacts. Korolevo represents, to our knowledge, the earliest securely dated hominin presence in Europe, and bridges the spatial and temporal gap between the Caucasus (around 1.85-1.78 million years ago)6 and southwestern Europe (around 1.2-1.1 million years ago)7,8. Our findings advance the hypothesis that Europe was colonized from the east, and our analysis of habitat suitability9 suggests that early hominins exploited warm interglacial periods to disperse into higher latitudes and relatively continental sites-such as Korolevo-well before the Middle Pleistocene Transition.

Czech Geological Survey Prague Czechia

Department of Archaeology and History La Trobe University Melbourne Victoria Australia

Department of Geoscience Aarhus University Aarhus Denmark

Department of Physical Geography and Geoecology Charles University Prague Czechia

GFÚ Institute of Geophysics Czech Academy of Sciences Prague Czechia

Institute of Archaeology Brno Czech Academy of Sciences Brno Czechia

Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Kyiv Ukraine

Institute of Archaeology Prague Czech Academy of Sciences Prague Czechia

Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf Dresden Germany

Nuclear Physics Institute Czech Academy of Sciences Řež Czechia

Palaeo Research Institute University of Johannesburg Johannesburg South Africa

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Kyiv Ukraine

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