NEW BRANCH ADDED TO EUROPEAN FAMILY TREE: EUROPEANS DESCENDED FROM AT 3, NOT 2, GROUPS OF ANCIENT HUMANS

Published by Harvard Medical School

Genetic and archaeological research in the last 10 years has revealed that almost all present-day Europeans descend from the mixing of two ancestral groups: indigenous hunter-gatherers and early European farmers.

However, researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Tübingen in Germany have now documented a genetic contribution from a third ancestor: Ancient North Eurasians. This group appears to have contributed DNA to present-day Europeans as well as to the people who travelled across the Bering Strait into the Americas more than 15,000 years ago.


This explains the recently discovered genetic connection between Europeans and Native Americans as the same Ancient North Eurasian group contributed to both of them. What is more, the research team also discovered that ancient Near Eastern farmers and their European descendants can trace much of their ancestry to a previously unknown, even older lineage called the Basal Eurasians.
To prove Europeans ancestry, the researchers collected and sequenced the DNA of more than 2,300 present-day people from around the world and of nine ancient humans from Sweden, Luxembourg and Germany.  But even if ancient DNA sequencing was considered to be a powerful technology to learn about human history, as they were limited number of DNA ancient samples, the team think there could easily be more than three ancient groups who contributed to today's European genetic profile. In fact, they have found that the three-way model doesn't tell the whole story for certain regions of Europe. That is why only more genetic data from ancient human remains will allow the scientific community to fully unravel our prehistoric past.