Modern humans expanded into Eurasia more than 40,000 years ago following their dispersal out of Africa. These Eurasians carried ~2-3% Neanderthal ancestry in their genomes, originating from admixture with Neanderthals that took place sometime between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, probably in the Middle East. In Europe, the modern human expansion preceded the disappearance of Neanderthals from the fossil record by 3,000-5,000 years. The genetic makeup of the first Europeans who colonized the continent more than 40,000 years ago remains poorly understood since few specimens have been studied. Here, we analyse a genome generated from the skull of a female individual from Zlatý kůň, Czechia. We found that she belonged to a population that appears to have contributed genetically neither to later Europeans nor to Asians. Her genome carries ~3% Neanderthal ancestry, similar to those of other Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. However, the lengths of the Neanderthal segments are longer than those observed in the currently oldest modern human genome of the ~45,000-year-old Ust'-Ishim individual from Siberia, suggesting that this individual from Zlatý kůň is one of the earliest Eurasian inhabitants following the expansion out of Africa.

Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement des Géosciences de l'Environnement Aix Marseille University CNRS IRD INRAE Collège de France Aix en Provence France

Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Czech Republic

Department of Anthropology National Museum Prague Czech Republic

Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry University of Pisa Pisa Italy

Institute for Archaeological Sciences Archaeo and Palaeogenetics University of Tübingen Tübingen Germany

Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research Friedrich Schiller University Jena Jena Germany

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig Germany

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Jena Germany

Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art School of Archaeology University of Oxford Oxford UK

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Nat Ecol Evol. 2021 Jun;5(6):711-712. doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01421-3. PubMed

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