Oldest human genome from southern Spain

“An international team of researchers has analyzed ancient human DNA from several archaeological sites in Andalucía in southern Spain. The study reports on the oldest genome to date from Cueva del Malalmuerzo in southern Spain, as well as the 7,000 to 5,000-year-old genomes of early farmers from other well-known sites, such as Cueva de Ardales.” Phys.org reported on March 1.

It quoted the first author of the study Vanessa Villalba-Mouco of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology saying "Thanks to the high quality of our data we were able to detect traces of one of the first genetic lineages that settled Eurasia 45,000 years ago. Importantly, we found similarities with a 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium whose ancestry we can now trace further to the 23,000-year-old individual from southern Iberia" . An interesting puzzle the study reported that there was no genetic link between the southern Iberian Peninsula and North Africa—despite only 13 kilometers across the Mediterranean Sea, and parallels in the archaeological record.