structural:summarization
Europe

The recent expansion of anatomically modern humans reached Europe around 40,000 years ago from Central Asia and the Middle East, as a result of cultural adaption to big game hunting of sub-glacial steppe fauna. Neanderthals were present both in the Middle East and in Europe, and the arriving populations of anatomically modern humans (also known as " Cro-Magnon " or European early modern humans) interbred with Neanderthal populations to a limited degree. Populations of modern humans and Neanderthal overlapped in various regions such as the Iberian peninsula and the Middle East. Interbreeding may have contributed Neanderthal genes to palaeolithic and ultimately modern Eurasians and Oceanians.