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 fromLuxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporaryhumansto show that most present-dayEuropeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations:westEuropean hunter-gatherers,who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not toNearEasterners; ancient north Eurasians related toUpper 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.Wemodel 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.