The oldest DNA ever found in human remains belongs to a woman who lived in the Czech Republic more than 45,000 years ago.
From the analysis of her skull it appears that she was one of the first groups of Homo sapiens to live in Eurasia after our species migrated from Africa.
It is believed that the woman, called Zlatý kůň, may have had up to six or fewer generations of Neanderthal ancestors in her past.
The finding reinforces that humans mated with Neanderthals shortly after we first reached Europe between 50,000 and 45,000 years.
This mating event has caused humans to absorb some Neanderthal genes that survive in all modern humans except Africans.
Neanderthals would soon become extinct, and some researchers said that competition with Homo sapiens and a changing climate was to blame.
Download for video
Pictured is the skull of a modern human female individual named Zlatý kůň. The genetic material obtained from this sample is considered to be the oldest human DNA found in Europe, as evidenced by Homo sapiens paired with Neanderthals shortly after arriving in Europe.
Pictured are excavations at the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. Several modern human bones have been recovered from this layer, along with a rich composition of stone tools, animal bones, bone tools and pendants.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany tried to date the skeletal remains using radiocarbon isotopes, the traditional and widely used method of finding out when a fossil is alive.
Pollution of the surplus, however, made it impossible.
But Neanderthal DNA can be used as a proxy for dating because the length of its segments in the genetic code gradually decreases over generations.
The researchers found in their study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, that Zlatý kůň spread long strips of uninterrupted Neanderthal DNA in her genome, suggesting that she lived not long after humans mated with Neanderthals.
“The results of our DNA analysis show that Zlatý kůň lived closer to the mixed event with Neanderthals in time,” said Kay Prüfer, co-author of the study.
In fact, the team estimates that Zlatý kůň lived only 2000 years after trying the first species between humans and Neanderthals.
The DNA of this person and their population is not seen in contemporary people in Asia or Europe, where Homo sapiens later colonized, the researchers found.
“It is very interesting that the earliest modern humans in Europe have finally failed!” says Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
This evidence, according to the academics, means that the Czech individual is almost certainly older than other candidates with a claim as the earliest human fossil in Europe.
In the photo, Zlatý klat’s leg is micro-sampled from the base of the skull in the clean room at the Max Planck Institute for Human History.
It is believed that the Czech woman, called Zlatý kůň, may have had only six or fewer generations back from the Neanderthal ancestors.
Two studies published today look at the genetic information of Homo sapiens and how much Neanderthal DNA was in their genomes. One study was in the Czech Republic and one in Bulgaria
Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in Human Evolution at the Natural History Museum, who was not involved in the research, said: ‘The partial skull and skeleton of Zlatý kůň was discovered in 1950 and is probably only about 15,000 years old.
‘New analyzes of the woman’s skull have dated radiocarbon to about 34,000 years old, but genomic data suggest that it may eventually be 10,000 years older than it is, and that it may be one of the oldest modern humans known to date in Eurasia was, represented. ‘
Last year, researchers discovered human remains in a Bulgarian cave called Bacho Kiro, which they said probably lived with Neanderthals.
The cave was first discovered and excavated in the 1970s and is located 5 kilometers from the city of Dryanovo.
Pictured is the intact tooth of a person found in the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. Genome-wide data of this individual indicate that he had a Neanderthal ancestor less than six generations before he lived
Pictured is the entrance to the Bacho Kiro Cave. The excavations are just inside the entrance and left. The cave stretches for 3 km and is a popular tourist destination
A study also published today in the journal Nature revealed further insight into these remains and found that they lived between 45,930 and 42,580 years before the time.
This finding supports the claims made last year that humans probably lived with Neanderthals for thousands of years before our cousin became extinct about 40,000 years ago.
Analysis of their genomes found that the three oldest people buried in the cave had more than three percent Neanderthal DNA in their genome.
In the analysis of the petrified human remains, it was found that people regularly hunted bison and deer, while also turning animal teeth into fashion accessories – something that Neanderthals also knew.
Pictured are excavations at the Bacho Kiro Cave. The excavator in front is recording artifacts (each marked with a colored pen). The bags with barcodes are for individual artifacts as soon as their position is recorded at a total station
A map with the relative dates on which people arrived in the various continents, including Europe 45,000 years ago. All mankind began in Africa and spread throughout the continent for thousands of years.
Several cave bear teeth turned into personal ornaments were also discovered on the Bulgarian site.
Professor Stringer adds that the findings suggest that ‘multiple pulses’ of Homo sapiens have spread in Eurasia.
He believes that the different waves of Homo sapine colonization would explain why the Zlatý kůň generation was unsuccessful. It would also mean that there were different breeding events with Neanderthals, he adds.