Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry
Mateja Hajdinjak
(1)
,
Fabrizio Mafessoni
(2)
,
Laurits Skov
(1, 3)
,
Benjamin Vernot
,
Alexander Hübner
(4, 5)
,
Qiaomei Fu
(6)
,
Elena Essel
(1)
,
Sarah Nagel
(1)
,
Birgit Nickel
(1)
,
Julia Richter
(1)
,
Oana Teodora Moldovan
,
Silviu Constantin
,
Elena Endarova
(7)
,
Nikolay Zahariev
(8)
,
Rosen Spasov
(9)
,
Frido Welker
(1)
,
Geoff Smith
(1)
,
Virginie Sinet-Mathiot
(1)
,
Lindsey Paskulin
(10)
,
Helen Fewlass
(1)
,
Sahra Talamo
,
Zeljko Rezek
,
Svoboda Sirakova
,
Nikolay Sirakov
,
Shannon Mcpherron
,
Tsenka Tsanova
,
Jean-Jacques Hublin
(11, 1)
,
Benjamin Peter
,
Matthias Meyer
,
Pontus Skoglund
,
Janet Kelso
,
Svante Pääbo
1
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology [Leipzig]
2 Department of Evolutionary Genetics
3 Francis Crick Inst, London NW1 1AT, England
4 DAG - Department of Archaeogenetics [Jena]
5 Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena [Jena, Germany]
6 Department of Genetics [Boston]
7 NMNHS - National Museum of Natural History [Sofia]
8 New Bulgarian University
9 Archaeology Department
10 University of Aberdeen
11 Collège de France - Chaire Paléoanthropologie
2 Department of Evolutionary Genetics
3 Francis Crick Inst, London NW1 1AT, England
4 DAG - Department of Archaeogenetics [Jena]
5 Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena [Jena, Germany]
6 Department of Genetics [Boston]
7 NMNHS - National Museum of Natural History [Sofia]
8 New Bulgarian University
9 Archaeology Department
10 University of Aberdeen
11 Collège de France - Chaire Paléoanthropologie
Mateja Hajdinjak
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240858
- ORCID : 0000-0002-4064-0331
Fabrizio Mafessoni
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240859
- ORCID : 0000-0003-4319-2076
Benjamin Vernot
- Fonction : Auteur
Alexander Hübner
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 793578
- ORCID : 0000-0003-3572-9996
Qiaomei Fu
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240860
- ORCID : 0000-0002-7141-0002
Oana Teodora Moldovan
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240861
- ORCID : 0000-0002-1262-0675
Silviu Constantin
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240862
- ORCID : 0000-0003-3737-2652
Geoff Smith
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1227721
- ORCID : 0000-0001-7155-5140
Helen Fewlass
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 791528
- ORCID : 0000-0002-9093-3490
Sahra Talamo
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1185808
- ORCID : 0000-0002-2406-3132
Zeljko Rezek
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240711
- ORCID : 0000-0001-9987-7985
Svoboda Sirakova
- Fonction : Auteur
Nikolay Sirakov
- Fonction : Auteur
Shannon Mcpherron
- Fonction : Auteur
Tsenka Tsanova
- Fonction : Auteur
Jean-Jacques Hublin
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1171163
- IdHAL : jean-jacques-hublin
- IdRef : 026926741
Benjamin Peter
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240863
- ORCID : 0000-0003-2526-8081
Matthias Meyer
- Fonction : Auteur
Pontus Skoglund
- Fonction : Auteur
Janet Kelso
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1240864
- ORCID : 0000-0002-3618-322X
Svante Pääbo
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 1209179
- ORCID : 0000-0002-4670-6311
Résumé
Abstract Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago 1–5 , but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago 6 , and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria 1,2 . They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania 7 and Siberia 8 who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.