"There is a surprising genetic unity between the earliest known Europeans and contemporary Europeans, ancient DNA reveals. This finding suggests that a complex network of sexual exchange may have existed across Europe over the past 50,000 years, and also helps to pinpoint when modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, the researchers said.
To shed light on the origins of modern Europeans, scientists analyzed DNA from the left shinbone of a skeleton, known as K14, which was excavated in 1954. K14 is one of the oldest fossils of a European modern human —in the area that's now Kostenki, in western Russia. That region is known for its mammoth structures, "circles made of mammoth bones that would have been the base of tents, huts, hearths, lithic and bone artifacts, as well as personal ornaments and figurines," said study co-author Marta Mirazón Lahr,...
The researchers sequenced K14's complete genome, making it the second-oldest modern human genome ever sequenced. The oldest yet was from a man found in western Siberia.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that contemporary Europeans shared genetic continuity with ancient Europeans.
"Virtually all the major genetic components you find in contemporary Europeans are present among the earliest Europeans," said lead study author Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "I don't think many would have predicted this."
The scientists discovered that for millennia, Europe may have been home to a so-called "metapopulation" of modern humans — a group of distinct, separate populations that regularly mixed, grew and fragmented. The genetic contributions of the earliest Eurasians to modern European populations may not have arrived through a few distinct migrations from Asia to Europe, but instead through gene flow in various directions.
"We have to revise our understanding of how the genetic diversity in contemporary Europeans came about," Willerslev told Live Science. "Early Europeans were part of a metapopulation stretching all the way to Central Asia, and through a complex network of sexual exchange, contemporary European populations were created." LiveScience
Are U Really Surprised?
I'm not surprised that Europeans are descended from the early settlers of Europe--nor am I surprised that the flow was mixed---for groups set out and wandered into Europe from various paths they chose to follow as family clans exited from Babel....Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
The researchers sequenced K14's complete genome, making it the second-oldest modern human genome ever sequenced. The oldest yet was from a man found in western Siberia.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that contemporary Europeans shared genetic continuity with ancient Europeans.
"Virtually all the major genetic components you find in contemporary Europeans are present among the earliest Europeans," said lead study author Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "I don't think many would have predicted this."
The scientists discovered that for millennia, Europe may have been home to a so-called "metapopulation" of modern humans — a group of distinct, separate populations that regularly mixed, grew and fragmented. The genetic contributions of the earliest Eurasians to modern European populations may not have arrived through a few distinct migrations from Asia to Europe, but instead through gene flow in various directions.
"We have to revise our understanding of how the genetic diversity in contemporary Europeans came about," Willerslev told Live Science. "Early Europeans were part of a metapopulation stretching all the way to Central Asia, and through a complex network of sexual exchange, contemporary European populations were created." LiveScience
Are U Really Surprised?
I'm not surprised that Europeans are descended from the early settlers of Europe--nor am I surprised that the flow was mixed---for groups set out and wandered into Europe from various paths they chose to follow as family clans exited from Babel....Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:9
