Published:29 Mar.2023 Source:Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
An international team of researchers has analysed 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.
The Iberian Peninsula plays an important role in the reconstruction of human population history. As a geographic cul-de-sac in the southwest of Europe, it is on one hand considered a refuge during the last Ice Age with its drastic temperature fluctuations. On the other hand, it may have been one of the starting points for the recolonisation of Europe after the glacial maximum. Indeed, previous studies had reported on the genomic profiles of 13,000 to 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from the Iberian Peninsula and provided evidence for the survival and continuation of a much older Palaeolithic lineage that has been replaced in other parts of Europe and is no longer detectable.
After an organism’s death, its DNA is only preserved for a certain period of time and under favourable climatic conditions. Extracting DNA from ancient remains from hot and dry climates is a huge challenge for researchers. In Andalucía, in the south of present-day Spain, climatic conditions are similar to those in North Africa -- however, DNA has successfully been recovered of 14,000-year-old human individuals from a cave site in Morocco. The new study fills crucial temporal and spatial gaps. Researchers can now directly investigate the role of the southern Iberian Peninsula as a refuge for Ice Age populations and potential population contacts across the Strait of Gibraltar during the last Ice Age, when sea-levels were much lower than today.
