Genetic sequencing of human remains dating back 45,000 years revealed previously unknown migration to Europe and showed that mixing with Neanderthals at that time was more common than previously thought.
The research is based on the analysis of several ancient human remains – including a whole tooth and bone fragments – found in a cave in Bulgaria last year.
Genetic sequencing found that the remains came from individuals who were more closely related to current populations in East Asia and America than populations in Europe.
“This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration to Europe, which was not previously known from genetic evidence,” the research published in the journal Wednesday. The nature, said.
It also “provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the first modern humans in Europe and the later ones in Eurasia,” the study added.
The second lower molar of a modern man found in the Bacho Kiro cave. (MPI-EVA / Rosen Spasov)
The findings “moved our previous understanding of early human migration to Europe,” said Mateja Hajdinjak, an associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who helped lead the research.
“It showed that even the earliest history of modern Europeans in Europe could have been tumultuous and involved population replacement,” she told AFP.
A high possibility of discovery is “a dispersion of human groups that are then replaced (by other groups) later in Western Eurasia, but continue to live and contribute with ancestors to the people of Eastern Eurasia,” she added.
The remains were discovered last year in Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria and were hailed at the time as evidence that humans lived with Neanderthals in Europe significantly earlier than previously thought.
Genetic analysis of the remains also showed that modern humans in Europe at the time were mixing more with Neanderthals than previously thought.
All “individuals in Bacho Kiro Cave have Neanderthal ancestors five to seven generations before they lived, suggesting that the mixing (mixing) of these first people in Europe and Neanderthals was common,” Hajdinjak said.
Previous evidence for the early human-Neanderthal mixture in Europe came from a single individual named Bone 1, dating back 40,000 years and found in Romania.
“So far, we have not been able to rule out that it is a coincidence,” Hajdinjak said.
Human history “lost in time”
The findings were accompanied by separate research published in the journal on Wednesday Ecology and evolution of nature involving sequencing the genome of samples from a skull found in the Czech Republic.
The skull was found in the Zlaty kun area in 1950, but its antiquity has been the subject of debate and contradictory findings in the decades since.
Initial analysis suggested it was more than 30,000 years old, but radiocarbon dating gave an age closer to 15,000 years.
Genetic analysis seems to have solved the problem, suggesting an age of at least 45,000 years, said Kay Prufer, of the archeology department at the Max Planck Institute, which led the research.
“We make use of the fact that all those who trace their ancestors back to individuals who left Africa more than 50,000 years ago carry a bit of Neanderthal descent in their genome,” he told AFP.
These traces of Neanderthals appear in short blocks in modern human genomes, and longer and longer, back in human history.
“In older people, such as Ust’-Ishim, a 45,000-year-old man from Siberia, these blocks are much longer,” Prufer said.
“We found that the genome of the woman Zlaty kun has even longer blocks than those of the man Ust’-Ishim. This makes us sure that she lived at the same time or even earlier.”
Despite dating from about the same period as Bacho Kiro, the Zlaty kun skull does not share genetic links with either modern Asian or European populations.
Prufer now hopes to study how the populations that produced the two sets of remains were related.
“We do not know who were the first Europeans to venture into an unknown country,” he said.
“By analyzing their genome, we discover a part of our own history that has been lost over time.”
© Agence France-Presse