Cro-Magnons, the earliest modern humans in Europe, enter the continent (including France) around forty thousand years ago during a long interglacial period of particularly mild climate, when Europe was relatively warm, and food was plentiful.

When they arrive in Europe, they bring with them sculpture, engraving, painting, body ornamentation, music and the painstaking decoration of utilitarian objects.

The recently discovered Denisova hominin, based on bone fragments of a juvenile that lived about forty-one thousand years ago found in Denisova Cave (Altai Krai, Russia), a region also inhabited at about the same time by Neanderthals and modern humans, shares a common origin with the Neanderthals and interbred with the ancestors of modern Melanesians.

The mtDNA of the Denisova hominin is distinct from the mtDNAs of Neanderthals and modern humans.

Genetic studies link approximately four percent of non-African modern human DNA to Neanderthals.

In addition, tests comparing the Denisova hominin genome with those of six modern humans whose genome has been sequenced—a Kung from South Africa, a Nigerian, a French person, a Papua New Guinean, a Bougainville Islander and a Han Chinese—showed that between four percent and six percent of the genome of Melanesians (represented by the Papua New Guinean and Bougainville Islander) derives from a Denisovan population.

This was possibly introduced during the early migration of the ancestors of Melanesians into Southeast Asia.

This history of interaction suggests that Denisovans once ranged widely over eastern Asia.

Cultural features associated with modern humans, such as careful burial of the dead, the production of art in the form of elaborate cave decoration, and the decoration of objects of everyday use, date from this period.

Between 100,000 and 38,000 BCE, African cultures have adapted to desert, savanna, and forest environments, with distinctive toolkits for each.

Hunting, fishing, and gathering remain the basic way of life, but Africans employ a wider range of strategies in exploiting different environments.

The Venus of Hohle Fels (also known as the Venus of Schelklingen), an Upper Paleolithic “Venus” figurine found near Schelklingen, Germany, is dated to between forty thousand and thirty-five thousand years ago.

Belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the assumed earliest presence of Homo sapiens in Europe (Early European Modern Humans), it is the oldest undisputed example of Upper Paleolithic art and figurative prehistoric art in general.

The figurine is a representation of a woman, putting emphasis on the vulva and the breasts.

Consequently, it is presumed to be an amulet related to fertility.

It is made of a woolly mammoth tusk and had broken into fragments, of which six have been recovered, with the left arm and shoulder still missing.

In place of the head, the figurine has a perforation so that it could have been worn as a pendant.

Archaeologist John J. Shea suggests it would have taken "tens if not hundreds of hours" to carve the figurine.

Ancestors of Clovis people might have lived on the eastern coast of North America, as suggested by the archaeological sites at Topper in the state of South Carolina, U.S.A., dated fifty thousand years BP, and ...

...the Meadowcroft Rockshelter located near Avella in Washington County, in southwestern Pennsylvania, United States, dated to sixteen thousand years BP.

These discoveries have raised doubts about the "Clovis First" theory, and have led to alternative proposals for the routes of colonization and the diffusion of culture through the continent, in a heated dispute that has not been solved.

Pedra Furada is the most controversial of the excavated prehistoric settlements in the Americas, indicating a human presence there as early as 50,000 BCE.

Pedra Furada ("drilled rock") is an important collection of over eight hundred archaeological sites and rock paintings in Brazil that suggest a human presence prior to the arrival of Clovis people in North America.

The discoveries are the subject of debate as they apparently contradict the "Clovis first" view for humans in the Americas, or short chronology theory, with the first movement beyond Alaska into the New World occurring no earlier than fifteen thousand to seventen thousand years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants.

Pedra Furada provides arguments for the proponents of the long chronology theory, which states that the first group of people entered the hemisphere at a much earlier date, possibly twenty one thousand to forty thousand ears ago, with a much later mass secondary wave of immigrants.

Genetic studies of indigenous peoples have concluded that the "colonizing founders" of the Americas emerged from a single-source ancestral population that evolved in isolation, likely in Beringia.

The isolation in Beringia might have lasted ten thousand to twenty thousand years.

Age estimates based on Y-chromosome micro-satellite place diversity of the American Haplogroup Q1a3a (Y-DNA) at around ten thousand to fifteen thousand years ago.

This does not address if there were any previous failed colonization attempts by other genetic groups, which could be represented by those settling the Pedra Furada site, as genetic testing can only address current population ancestral heritage.

The earliest known remains of Early European Modern Humans (EEMH) have been radiometrically dated to approximately 35,000 years before present.

A four-hole flute, excavated in September 2008 from a German cave, is the oldest handmade musical instrument ever found, according to archaeologist Nicholas Conrad, who assembled the flute from twelve pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in the Hohle Fels, a cave in the Swabian Alps of Germany.

At a news conference on June 24, 2012, Conrad said the 8.6-inch flute was crafted thirty-five thousand years ago.

The flutes found in the Hohle Fels are among the earliest musical instruments ever found.

Sri Lanka's earliest archaeological evidence of human colonization appears at the site of Balangoda, whose Mesolithic hunter gatherers arrived on the island about thirty-four thousand years ago and lived in caves, several of which have yielded many artifacts from these people, currently the first known inhabitants of the island.

The Swabian Alb region has a number of caves that have yielded mammoth ivory artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic period, totaling about twenty-five items to date.

These include the lion-headed figure of Hohlenstein-Stadel and an ivory flute found at Geißenklösterle, dated to thirty-six thousand years ago.

This concentration of evidence of full behavioral modernity in the period of forty to thirty thousand years ago, including figurative art and instrumental music, is unique worldwide.

Nicholas J. Conard speculates that the bearers of the Aurignacian culture in the Swabian Alb may be credited with the invention, not just of figurative art and music, but possibly, early religion as well.

In a distance of seventy centimeters to the Venus figurine, Conard's team found a flute made from a vulture bone.

Additional artifacts excavated from the same cave layer included flint-knapping debris, worked bone, and carved ivory as well as remains of tarpans, reindeer, cave bears, woolly mammoths, and Alpine Ibexes.