Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans
- PMID: 25230663
- PMCID: PMC4170574
- DOI: 10.1038/nature13673
Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans
Abstract
We sequenced the genomes of a ∼7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight ∼8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporary humans to show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers, who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations' deep relationships and show that early European farmers had ∼44% ancestry from a 'basal Eurasian' population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare competing financial interests: UH is an employee of Illumina, TL is an employee of AMGEN, and JM is an employee of 23andMe.
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