Genome-wide data from two early Neolithic East Asian individuals dating to 7700 years ago

• Published in: Science Advances
• Main Authors: Bradley, Daniel, Siska, Veronica, Jones, Eppie Ruth, Jeon, Sungwon, Bhak, Youngjune, Kim, Hak-Min, Cho, Yun Sung, Kim, Hyunho, Lee, Kyusang, Veselovskaya, Elizaveta, Balueva, Tatiana, Gallego-Llorente, Marcos, Hofreiter, Michael, Eriksson, Andres, Pinhasi, Ron, Bhak, Jong, Manica, Andrea
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Holocene prehistory; Ancient genetics; East Asia; Neolithic; Russian Far East; Human population genetics; Tungusic languages
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2262/90843; https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/2/e1601877; http://people.tcd.ie/dbradley; https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1601877

Ancient genomes have revolutionized our understanding of Holocene prehistory and, particularly, the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia. In contrast, East Asia has so far received little attention, despite representing a core region at which the Neolithic transition took place indep endently ~3 millennia after its onset in the Near East. We report genome-wide data from two hunter-gatherers from Devil ? s Gate, an early Neolithic cave site (dated to ~7.7 thousand years ago) located in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. Both of these individ- uals are genetically most similar to geographically clos e modern populations from the Amur Basin, all speaking Tungusic languages, and, in particular, to the Ulchi. The s imilarity to nearby modern populations and the low levels of additional genetic material in the Ulc hi imply a high level of genetic continui ty in this region during the Holocene, a pattern that markedly contrast s with that reported for Europe