As we reported recently, an incredible discovery unveils the truth about Ice Age Europeans and how they developed and evolved into modern man based on analysis of DNA from bones dated between 7,000 and 45,000 years ago. But another discovery shows a huge upheaval on the continent some 14,000 years ago.

A team of international scientists have learned that early Europeans may have all come from a small region in modern-day Belgium, and that their demographic history may have been a lot more diverse than anyone had thought. They had also lived beside the Neanderthals, are extinct cousins, those many thousands of years ago.

The finding was based on DNA data from 51 prehistoric humans, all of whom appeared to have been descending from a single population.

Another discovery the scientists made in the process of doing this research was an event that happened 14,000 years ago, when there appeared to be tremendous population turnover in Europe from the east rather than the west, as different genetics spread across the continent.

This change was observed for thousands of years, until the arrival of farming and human tribes began to settle down and build societies.

“The new genetic data, published May 2, 2016 in Nature, reveal two big changes in prehistoric human populations that are closely linked to the end of the last Ice Age around 19,000 years ago,” the statement reads. “As the ice sheet retreated, Europe was repopulated by prehistoric humans from southwest Europe (e.g., Spain). Then, in a second event about 14,000 years ago, populations from the southeast (e.g., Turkey, Greece) spread into Europe, displacing the first group of humans.

“Archeological studies have shown that modern humans swept into Europe about 45,000 years ago and caused the demise of the Neanderthals, indicated by the disappearance of Neanderthal tools in the archaeological record,” it continues. “The researchers also knew that during the Ice Age — a long period of time that ended about 12,000 years ago, with its peak intensity between 25,000 and 19,000 years ago — glaciers covered Scandinavia and northern Europe all the way to northern France. As the ice sheets retreated beginning 19,000 years ago, prehistoric humans spread back into northern Europe.