<P> During this time sea level was much lower and most of Maritime Southeast Asia formed one land mass known as Sunda . Migration continued Southeast on the coastal route to the straits between Sunda and Sahul, the continental land mass of present - day Australia and New Guinea . The gaps on the Weber Line are up to 90 km wide, so the migration to Australia and New Guinea would have required seafaring skills . Migration also continued along the coast eventually turning northeast to China and finally reaching Japan before turning inland . This is evidenced by the pattern of mitochondrial haplogroups descended from haplogroup M, and in Y - chromosome haplogroup C . </P> <P> Sequencing of one Aboriginal genome from an old hair sample in Western Australia, revealed that the individual was descended from people who migrated into East Asia between 62,000 and 75,000 years ago . This supports the theory of a single migration into Australia and New Guinea before the arrival of Modern Asians (between 25,000 to 38,000 years ago) and their later migration into North America . This migration is believed to have happened around 50,000 years ago, before Australia and New Guinea were separated by rising sea levels approximately 8,000 years ago . This is supported by a date of 50,000 - 60,000 years ago for the oldest evidence of settlement in Australia, around 40,000 years ago for the oldest human remains The earliest humans artefacts are at least 65,000 years old and the extinction of the Australian megafauna by humans between 46,000 and 15,000 years ago advocated by Tim Flannery, which is similar to what happened in the Americas . The continued use of stone age tools in Australia has been much debated . </P> <P> The recent expansion of anatomically modern humans reached Europe around 40,000 years ago, from 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) have interbred with Neanderthal populations to a limited degree . Populations of modern humans and Neanderthal overlapped in various regions such as in Iberian peninsula and in the Middle East . Interbreeding may have contributed Neanderthal genes to palaeolithic and ultimately modern Eurasians and Oceanians . </P> <P> An important difference between Europe and other parts of the inhabited world was the northern latitude . Archaeological evidence suggests humans, whether Neanderthal or Cro - Magnon, reached sites in Arctic Russia by 40,000 years ago . </P>

Which event led to the first human migration into europe