All posts by Archaeology World Team

They rebuild the faces of Egyptian mummies from their 2,000-year-old DNA

They rebuild the faces of Egyptian mummies from their 2,000-year-old DNA

Three ancient Egyptians’ faces have been brought to life using 2,000-year-old DNA. Scientists have used DNA dating back over 2,000 years to bring the faces of three ancient Egyptian males to life.

The trio of samples, estimated to be between 2,023 and 2,797 years old, is thought to be the first time contemporary procedures have been employed on the human DNA of this antiquity.

JK2134, who lived between 776 and 569 BC, JK2888, who lived around 97-2 BC, and JK2911, who lived between 769 and 560 BC, were the names given to the three.

A research team from Germany has collaborated with a US-based DNA technology company to generate a visual reconstruction of the faces of three ancient Egyptian mummies.

Parabon NanoLabs employed cutting-edge technology and a forensic artist to forecast the men’s appearance around the age of 25 to reveal the features of the ancient Egyptian mummies.

The mummies come from the Abusir el-Meleq, an ancient Nile hamlet. The researchers discovered that their origin was more similar to the modern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern people than Egyptians.

They were described as having light brown complexions, dark hair and eyes, and no freckles.

“These results are highly consistent with Schuenemann et al’s conclusions that ‘ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than modern-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times and that they had an allele for lighter skin,” according to a press release from Parabon.

Before they were sequenced and “matched to the human reference genome,” raw data from three ancient Egyptian mummies was received from the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). Each sample was subjected to enzymatic damage repair.

It was argued that the work was only possible because of biometric developments in the field of low-coverage imputation.

“Parabon has been the leader in forensic microarray analysis for years, and with the advent of this new imputation method, we can now handle even the most complex samples, ancient or forensic,” said Dr. Janet Cady, a Parabon bioinformaticist and WGS analyst who spearheaded the work.

Parabon used their “Snapshot DNA Phenotyping pipeline” on the three ancient mummy samples after the “imputation” stage. Snapshot, which was created to deal with missing data in difficult forensic cases, “predicted each mummy’s ancestry, colour, and face morphology,” according to the researchers. The men’s front and side profiles, as well as a facial heat map, were revealed by the three-dimensional “face morphology.”

“It’s fantastic to see,” said Dr. Ellen Greytak, Parabon’s director of bioinformatics. This is a condensed version of the information.

Gold mask among 3,000-year-old relics unearthed in southwest China

Gold mask among 3,000-year-old relics unearthed in southwest China

Earlier this year, archaeologists were awed when they discovered the partial remains of a 3,000-year-old gold mask at the Sanxingdui dig in China’s Sichuan province.

A bronze mask was discovered in one of the eight sacrificial pits discovered at the Sanxingdui ruins site
A bronze mask was discovered in one of the eight sacrificial pits discovered at the Sanxingdui ruins site

Weighing in at half a pound, the mask was considered unprecedented. But, this month, experts’ expectations were bested once again when another gold-mask was found at the same site—this one far more complete.

Last Thursday, the mask was excavated in the sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui, which have yielded numerous artefacts since they were initially found in 1929.

An archaeologist at work in one of the sacrificial pits.

According to the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua, the mask is more than one foot long and was crafted by ancient people. While many objects found at Sanxingdui are known to be thousands of years old, archaeologists have not yet said when the mask was made.

“The new discoveries demonstrate once again that imagination and creativity of the ancient Chinese far surpassed what people today had expected,” Tang Fei, chief of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, told Xinhua.

The mask was discovered this month as part of a cache of more than 500 pieces that also includes a jade knife, a bronze head, and a zun, or an urn that would have held wine used in rituals in ancient China.

sacrificial
An artefact found at Sanxingdui.

There are also some bronze objects that have not yet been identified because they are “so unique that even we don’t know how to name them,” Zhao Hao, an associate professor at Peking University, told Xinhua.

The new trove brings the total number of objects found at Sanxingdui to around 2,000.

Some experts within China have regarded the sacrificial pits there as being of extreme archaeological importance—even more significant, perhaps, than the Terracotta Army, which was buried Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, sometime around 210 B.C.E. in Shaanxi.

Mass grave of 25 Christian soldiers who were ”decapitated” during a 13th century Crusade is unearthed in Lebanon

Mass grave of 25 Christian soldiers who were ”decapitated” during a 13th century Crusade is unearthed in Lebanon

A pair of mass graves containing 25 Crusaders who were slaughtered during a 13th-century war in the Holy Land have been unearthed in Lebanon. A team of international archaeologists uncovered the gruesome scene at Sidon Castle on the eastern Mediterranean coast of south Lebanon.

Wounds on the remains suggest the soldiers died at the end of swords, maces and arrows, and charring on some bones means they were burned after being dropped into the pit. Other remains show markings on the neck, which likely means these individuals were captured on the battlefield and later decapitated.  

Historical records written by crusaders show that Sidon was attacked and destroyed in 1253 by Mamluk troops, and again in 1260 by Mongols, and the soldiers found in the mass graves likely perished in one of these battles.

A pair of mass graves containing 25 Crusaders who were slaughter during a 13th-century war has been unearthed in Lebanon

The Crusades were a series of religious wars fought between 1095 and 1291, in which Christian invaders tried to claim the near East, including Lebanon where the 25 dead soldiers were found.

The mass graves were found within the town walls and were rectilinear grave pits that also contained artefacts that belonged to the Crusaders.

‘Within the grave pit (burial 110) a wide variety of artefacts were observed dispersed amongst the human and non-human bones, with no immediate patterning evident, reads the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

‘Metal finds included copper alloy buckles and fittings, at least two different sizes of iron nails, other iron fittings, a silver coin, a silver finger-ring and a single copper alloy arrowhead.

The mass graves were found within the town walls and were rectilinear grave pits that also contained artefacts that belonged to the Crusaders

Other finds included medieval potsherds, residual Persian period potsherds, glass fragments, and a small piece of charred, twisted fibre.’

Archaeologists knew the remains belonged to Crusaders after discovering the  European style belt buckles and a crusader coin within the graves.

DNA and isotope analyses of their teeth further confirmed that some of the men were born in Europe, while others were the offspring of crusader settlers who migrated to the ‘Holy Land’ and intermarried with local people.

The team ventured into the grave pits to take a closer look at the pile of bones that showed many of the soldiers were attacked from behind as they were running away from the battle. Others have sword wounds across the back of the neck, indicating they were possibly captives executed by decapitation after the battle.

Dr Richard Mikulski of Bournemouth University, who excavated and analyzed the skeletal remains and worked with the archaeologists at the Sidon excavation site, explained, ‘All the bodies were of teenage or adult males, indicating that they were combatants who fought in the battle when Sidon was attacked. 

‘When we found so many weapon injuries on the bones as we excavated them, I knew we had made a special discovery.’

DNA and isotope analyses of their teeth further confirmed that some of the men were born in Europe, while others were the offspring of crusader settlers who migrated to the ‘Holy Land’ and intermarried with local people

Bournemouth University colleague Dr Martin Smith, said in a statement: ‘To distinguish so many mixed up bodies and body parts took a huge amount of work, but we were finally able to separate them out and look at the pattern of wounds they had sustained.’

‘The way the body parts were positioned suggests they had been left to decompose on the surface before being dropped into a pit sometime later. Charring on some bones suggests they used fire to burn some of the bodies.’

Dr Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, who was the crusader expert on the project, explained: ‘Crusader records tell us that King Louis IX of France was on crusade in the Holy Land at the time of the attack on Sidon in 1253. 

‘He went to the city after the battle and personally helped to bury the rotting corpses in mass graves such as these. Wouldn’t it be amazing if King Louis himself had helped to bury these bodies?’

12th Century stone idol of Lord Ganesh discovered

12th Century stone idol of Lord Ganesh discovered

A 12th-century idol representing the Hindu god Ganesh has been discovered accidentally in southeastern India. A farmer in the village of Motupalli in Prakasam District stumbled across the stone statue while tilling his land. In Hinduism, Lord Ganesh is presented as a portly elephant-headed figure with four arms.

He is considered the god of wisdom, the patron of science and art and the remover of obstacles. Standing about 18 inches tall, the idol displays Ganesh sitting cross-legged, known as the ‘Padmasana’ posture, on a lotus pedestal.

Two of the idol’s hands are broken—in one remaining hand, he holds his broken tusk and in the other a sweet Indian dumpling known as a modaka.

The announcement of the idol’s discovery came during the 10-day Ganesh Chaturthi festival when Hindus celebrate Lord Ganesh’s birth.

Farmer Siripudi Venkateswaralu discovered the idol on September 9 while tilling his farm in Motupalli, a village in the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, The Hindu reported.

12th Century stone idol of Lord Ganesh discovered
A 13 inch stone idol of Ganesh, the Hindu remover of obstacles, was discovered in Andhra Pradesh on the eve of a festival celebrating the elephant-headed god’s birth

Found on the eve of a festival devoted to Ganesh, the 800-year-old idol drew crowds of locals and visitors alike.  Running from September 10 to 19 this year, Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated with fasting, offerings, and prayers.

Later, modaka is distributed and public feasts and martial arts exhibitions are held.

Ganesh is typically presented with four arms, with an axe in his upper right hand, a noose in his upper left hand and sweet dumplings in the lower left. His broken tusk is often shown in his lower right though sometimes the hand is extended out to the viewer in a posture of enlightenment.

On the tenth day, idols of Ganesh are carried in a public procession and immersed in a nearby river or sea. 

The statue found in Motupall is 42 inches long, 30 inches wide and 18 inches tall, and is missing Ganesh’s typical mukut, or crown, according to archaeologist E. Sivanagi Reddy.

Reddy dated the icon to the 12th century, when Andhra Pradesh was ruled by the Chola dynasty, based on its style and inscriptions in the ruins of the nearby Kodanda Ramaswamy temple.

The Chola dynasty was a Tamil empire that governed southern India until the 13th century.

In Hindu iconography, Ganesh is usually depicted with an elephant head and a stout human body with four arms.

Each appendage carries an item with ritual significance: An axe in his upper right hand, and his broken tusk, or ‘danta,’ in his lower right. (In one story, Ganesh’s tusk was broken by an axe thrown by a warrior seeking to attack his father, Shiva.) 

A noose is in his upper left hand and sweets are in the lower left. The idol was taken to the temple by the Motupalli Heritage Society, though its final disposition is unknown.

In August Reddy was part of a team of archaeologists who found a Tamil inscription in the temple dedicated to Prataparudra, emperor of the Kakatiya dynasty that supplanted the Chola.

The inscription dated to the early 14t century and registers the land as a gift ‘for the merit of the king,’ The Deccan Chronicle reported. Prataparudra was the last Kakatiya ruler: He died during a 1323 invasion that saw the kingdom annexed to the Islamic Delhi Sultanate.

This Ancient Underground City Was Big Enough to House 20,000 People

This Ancient Underground City Was Big Enough to House 20,000 People

Chicago, like a lot of other modern cities, has a hidden secret: It’s home to miles of passageways deep underground that allow commuters to get from one place to another without risking nasty weather.

This Ancient Underground City Was Big Enough to House 20,000 People
Illustration of the underground maze-like ancient city beneath Cappadocia.
The Cappadocia landscape with its tuff towers.

Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and Dallas all have their own networks of underground tunnels, as well. But there’s a place in Eastern Europe that puts those forgotten passages to shame. Welcome to Derinkuyu — the underground city.

A Subterranean Suburb

Picture this. It’s 1963, and you’re on a construction crew renovating a home. You bring your sledgehammer down on a soft stone wall, and it all crumbles away, revealing a large, snaking passageway so long that you can’t see where it ends.

This is the true story of how the undercity at Derinkuyu was (re-)discovered. While those workers knew they’d found something special, they couldn’t know just how massive their discovery had been.

Stretching 250 feet (76 meters) underground with at least 18 distinct levels, Derinkuyu was a truly massive place to live. Yes, live. There was room for 20,000 people to stay here, complete with all of the necessities (and a few luxuries) — freshwater, stables, places of worship, and even wineries and oil presses.

Circular stones were used to seal access to passageways.

It isn’t the only underground city in the area known as Cappadocia, but it’s the deepest one we know of, and for many years, it was believed to be the largest as well. (Another recently discovered location may have been home to even more people.)

Derinkuyu and the other 40-ish underground cities nearby are made possible thanks to the prevalence of tuff in the area, a kind of volcanic rock that solidifies into something soft and crumbly. That makes it relatively easy to carve enormous subterranean passages — but why would you want to? The answer lies in the cities’ origins.

Defense Against the Sword Arts

Derinkuyu isn’t exactly inhospitable on the surface level (after all, that’s where the people who found it were living). So why did ancient people decide to build their living quarters below the surface? Because they weren’t hiding from the broiling sun or annual meteor showers.

They were clearly hiding from invading forces, with massive, rolling stone doors to block off each floor should any armies breach the fortress. But who were the people of the caves, and who were they defending themselves against? The answer to the second question depends on the answer to the first.

The earliest known people to live in the area were the Hittites, who ruled the Turkish Peninsula from about the 17th to 13th centuries B.C.E. — well over three millennia ago.

Some scholars point to artefacts with Hittite cultural elements, such as a small statue of a lion, found in the underground caves. That suggests these ancient people would have been taking refuge from invading Thracians.

A 55-meter (180-ft) shaft used a primary well at Derinkuyu.

If they were, it didn’t work forever: A tribe of Thracians, the Phrygians, conquered the area next. It’s possible that the Hittites never lived underground, however; an alternate theory says that it was the Phrygians, not the Hittites, who spawned the subterranean city.

Since the construction of many of the large underground complexes is dated to some time between the 10th and 7th centuries B.C.E., and the Phrygians lived there until the 6th century B.C.E., they’re generally regarded to have created the first caves. In that case, they may have been hiding from the Persian host under Cyrus the Great that eventually did take over the region.

Lost and Found

The Persians would have used those caves as well, as would all of the people to come after. Eventually, according to some sources, early Christians around the 2nd century C.E. took root in the caves as they fled Roman persecution.

This pattern continued throughout the centuries and millennia to come — in fact, Greek Christians were still using the caves as late as 1923. It’s pretty incredible, then, that the caves would have been forgotten in the 40-odd years between their last residents and their “re-discovery.”

It’s more likely, then, that it wasn’t the caves themselves, but the extent of the caves that were forgotten. While the holes burrowed into the area’s fairy chimneys would have been obvious even from a distance, it’s likely that the people living in more modern accommodations never realized that the caves in the wilderness outside of the urban area reached 18 stories down.

Bone Tools in Morocco May Be Earliest Evidence of Clothing

Bone Tools in Morocco May Be Earliest Evidence of Clothing

Humans living on the Atlantic coast of what’s now Morocco were making clothes from animal hides between 120,000 and 90,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Initially, researchers assumed the bones they were collecting were the remnants of an ancient meal. Scientists wanted to analyze the animal bones to better understand what Contrebandiers Cave’s early human inhabitants were eating.

But instead of evidence of an ancient menu, researchers found the remnants of clothes-making tools. Scientists detailed the breakthrough discovery in a new paper, published Thursday in the journal iScience.

“These bone tools have shaping and use marks that indicate they were used for scraping hides to make leather and for scraping pelts to make fur,” lead study author Emily Hallett said in a press release.

“At the same time, I found a pattern of cut marks on the carnivore bones from Contrebandiers Cave that suggested that humans were not processing carnivores for meat but were instead skinning them for their fur,” said Hallett, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.

Fossils suggest humans were using bone tools to manufacture clothes in Morocco’s Contrebandiers Cave some 120,000 years ago.

In order to tell the story of human evolution, scientists must understand how early humans adapted and exploited new environs.

For the earliest migrants, survival demanded more than just food and shelter. To exploit cooler environs, humans needed protection from the elements — they needed clothes.

On the floor of the Contrebandiers Cave, researchers found evidence that humans were manipulating bones to craft tools used for manufacturing pelts and other pieces of clothing.

In total, researchers collected 60 bones that had been ground, smoothed and polished into uniform shapes for scraping and softening animal hides.

Scientists also recovered the remains of sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats, all with marks suggesting humans had purposefully removed their skins.

“The combination of carnivore bones with skinning marks and bone tools likely used for fur processing provide highly suggestive proxy evidence for the earliest clothing in the archaeological record,” said Hallett.

“But given the level of specialization in this assemblage, these tools are likely part of a larger tradition with earlier examples that haven’t yet been found,” Hallett said.

Hallett and her colleagues also recovered the tip of an ancient cetacean tooth, which scientists determine had also been manipulated by early humans.

It’s the first time researchers have recovered the remains of a Late Pleistocene marine mammal from North Africa. The fossil serves as the earliest evidence of humans using the teeth of marine mammals.

“The Contrebandiers Cave bone tools demonstrate that by roughly 120,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began to intensify the use of bone to make formal tools and use them for specific tasks, including leather and fur working,” Hallett said.

“This versatility appears to be at the root of our species, and not a characteristic that emerged after expansions into Eurasia,” Hallett said.

Ancient 520 million-year-old sea monster with 18 TENTACLES around its mouth discovered

Ancient 520 million-year-old sea monster with 18 TENTACLES around its mouth discovered

The discovery of a fossil showing an ancient sea creature with 18 tentacles surrounding its mouth has helped to solve a modern-day mystery about the origins of a gelatinous carnivore called a comb jelly, a new study finds.

The previously unknown “sea monster,” which scientists dubbed Daihua sanqiong, lived a whopping 518 million years ago in what is now China. And the extinct animal shares a number of anatomical characteristics with the modern comb jelly, a little sea creature that uses so-called comb rows full of loads of hair-like cilia to swim through the oceans.

The discovery suggests that this newfound species may be the comb jelly’s distant relative, said study lead researcher Jakob Vinther, a paleobiologist at Bristol University in the United Kingdom.

“With fossils, we have been able to find out what the bizarre comb jellies originated from,” Vinther told Live Science. “Even though we now can show they came from a very sensible place, it doesn’t make them any less weird.”

This finding, however, has sparked a debate. While the discovery of D. sanqiong is impressive, it’s hard to say whether this ancient creature is part of the lineage that produced comb jellies, said Casey Dunn, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, who was not involved with the study.

“I am highly skeptical of the conclusions they draw,” Dunn told Live Science.

A magnified shot of the rows of cilia on Daihua sanqiong, which suggest that it might be a distant relative of the modern comb jelly.

18 incredible tentacles

Vinther came across the D. sanqiong fossil while visiting colleagues at Yunnan University in China.

The scientists there showed him a number of fossils in their collection, including the mysterious creature they later named Daihua sanqiong, which was discovered by study co-researcher Xianguang Hou, a paleobiologist at Yunnan University. The genus name honors the Dai tribe in Yunnan; “hua” means flower in Mandarin, and refers to the critter’s flower-like shape.

On each of D. sanqiong’s tentacles are fine, feather-like branches with rows of large ciliary hairs, which likely helped it catch prey. These hairs, according to Vinther, grabbed his attention “because we only find big cilia on comb jellies.” To swim, comb jellies move their cilia, which then flicker in beautiful iridescent colors.

A living comb jelly, known as Euplokamis. The creature’s rainbow iridescence is caused by the movement of the ciliary comb bands on the animal’s body.

Moreover, the D. sanqiong fossil bears an intriguing resemblance to other known ancient animals, including Xianguangia, another ancient creature with 18 tentacles, and the tulip-like sea creatures Dinomischus and Siphusauctum.

“To make a long story short, we were able to reconstruct the whole [early] lineage of comb jellies,” by doing anatomical comparisons, Vinther said.

This is a big deal, because some scientists argue that these swimming carnivores were among the first animals to evolve on Earth, based on family trees analyses and genetic modeling of modern comb jellies. But now, this international team has possibly shown that comb jellies have a long lineage that precedes them, Vinther said.

This newly described lineage suggests that some of the ancestors of comb jellies had skeletons and that their ancient tentacles evolved into the combs with the densely packed cilia seen on comb jellies today.

An artist’s illustration of Daihua sanqiong.

The discovery also sheds light on where these ancient animals likely sat on the tree of life. For instance, researchers previously thought that Xianguangia was a sea anemone, but it “is actually part of the comb jelly branch,” study co-researcher Peiyun Cong , a professor of paleobiology at Yunnan University, said in a statement.

These findings also make a strong case that comb jellies are related to corals, sea anemones and jellyfish, the researchers said. “Those [ancient] tentacles are the same tentacles that you see on corals and sea anemones,” Vinther said. “We can trace comb jellies to these flower-like animals that lived more than half a billion years ago.” 

But not everyone agrees with this analysis. While Dunn commended the researchers for their detailed description of D. sanqiong and its proposed relatives, some of these creatures have such different body shapes that it’s challenging to see how they could be related, he said. It’s possible that the tulip-looking Dinomischus and Siphusayctum creatures are related to each other. But Siphusauctum has ciliary rows on the inside of its body, and the animal purported to come after it, Galeactena, has these rows on the outside of its body.

It’s hard to see how this animal would, in effect, turn inside out as it evolved, Dunn said. Given that some of these claims are tenuous, the burden of proof is higher, and the researchers don’t quite get there, Dunn said.

“These are exciting animals no matter how they’re related to each other,” Dunn said. “Even though I’m skeptical that tentacles and comb rows are homologous [evolutionarily related], I think that as we describe more diversity from these deposits, certainly we’re going to learn a lot more about animal evolution.”

DNA of a female hunter-gatherer, buried 7,000 years ago in Indonesia, reveals population history of SE Asia

DNA of a female hunter-gatherer, buried 7,000 years ago in Indonesia, reveals population history of SE Asia

A team of archaeological geneticists has reconstructed the genome of a female hunter-gatherer from the Indonesian archipelago, which sheds significant light on the population history of southeast Asia.

This study reports the first known human genome from Leang Panninge in Wallacea, an oceanic island in the middle of the continental shelves of Sahul and Sunda.

Although anatomically modern humans are posited to have crossed over to Australia from Asia as early as 65,000 years ago, the oldest dated Homo sapiens remains come from only 13,000 years ago.

DNA of a female hunter-gatherer, buried 7,000 years ago in Indonesia, reveals population history of SE Asia
The DNA was sequenced from the petrous bone, a small bone in the ear region of the skull.

One of the reasons is the tropical climate, which decomposes natural tissues quite quickly and is therefore not very conducive to the preservation of any remains. Previously, only two ancient human genomes, one from Laos and another from Malaysia, had been sequenced from southeast Asia.

Hunting gathering is a lifestyle that is associated with the Palaeolithic (3 million years ago to 10,000 years ago) in the archaeological record. This lifestyle was largely replaced by the adoption of agriculture and domestication of animals and plants, widely known as the Neolithic Revolution (10,000 to 8000 years ago). However, some hunter-gatherer groups have managed to survive to the present day and have been the subject of many anthropological inquiries.

Reconstruction of genetic history

The present study employed molecular markers with different modes of inheritance to examine the genetic history of the individual from Leang Panninge.

While nuclear DNA (nrDNA) is biparentally inherited i.e. approximately half coming from the mother and half from the father, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) shows uniparental inheritance i.e. it is inherited exclusively from the mother. Studies targeting more molecular markers than one enables a better reconstruction of the genetic history of a population.

The DNA was sequenced from the petrous bone, a small bone in the ear region of the skull. The petrous, in recent years, has been targeted extensively for ancient DNA for its remarkable preservation of genetic material.

Since there is a paucity of a wide number of ancient individuals, any ancient DNA study has to be compared with the known genetic history of present-day populations in the region, which, in this case, were southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and other Oceanian islands.

Who was her ancestor?

Genetic analyses reveal that the individual shares significant genetic ancestry with the present-day populations of Oceania — Australia, Papua New Guinea and other island groups.

a.Sulawesi and Wallacea. The red rectangle indicates the region shown in b. b, Leang Panninge.

Selina Carlhoff, the lead author of the study, clarified in an email: “In direct comparisons, we show that these Near Oceanian groups are more closely related to each other than to Leang Panninge…which would place Leang Panninge outside of that clade.”

The populations of Oceania and Eurasia are supposed to have diverged 58,000 years ago, and the Papuan and Australian people around 37,000 years ago, which is also when the Leang Panninge individual had branched off.

While this was going on, populations from these areas had seen multiple introductions of genetic material from the Denisovans (Denisovans are an extinct species of early hominins that ranged across Asia during the Palaeolithic).

Researchers identified another genetic ancestral lineage in the ancient genome of the individual that seems more closely related to deep Asian lineages.

“Considering the Leang Panninge individual as an admixture between a Near Oceanian- and a deep East Asian-related lineage may also explain the reduced amount of Denisovan-related ancestry compared to present-day Papuan groups,” Carlhoff added.

Given the dearth of pre-Neolithic genomes from the region, it is difficult to underpin the exact source of admixtures. It could be that this individual carries some ancestry from the first Homo sapiens inhabitants of Sulawesi around 50,000 years ago, or that a Southeast Asian group related to the present-day Andamanese people had contributed some genetic material.