Neanderthal Ancestry Identifies Oldest Modern Human Genome

In an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution , an international team of researchers sequence the genome of an almost complete skull first discovered in ZlatÃoe Kůň, Czechia in the early 1950s and now stored in the National Museum in Prague. The segments of Neanderthal DNA in its genome were longer than those of the Ust-Ishim individual from Siberia, the previous oldest modern human sequenced, suggesting modern humans lived in the heart of Europe more than 45,000 years ago. Ancient DNA from Neandertals and early modern humans has recently shown that the groups interbred somewhere in the Near East after modern humans left Africa some 50,000 years ago. As a result, all people outside Africa carry around 2% to 3% Neandertal DNA. In modern human genomes, those Neandertal DNA segments became increasingly shorter over time and their length can be used to estimate when an individual lived. Archaeological data published last year furthermore suggests that modern humans were already present in southeastern Europe 47-43,000 years ago, but due to a scarcity of fairly complete human fossils and the lack of genomic DNA, there is little understanding of who these early human colonists were - or of their relationships to ancient and present-day human groups. In a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution , an international team of researchers reports what is likely the oldest reconstructed modern human genome to date.