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 Ancient people from Siberia who were related to the first humans
to enter the Americas during the Ice Age also mingled with
prehistoric populations in Europe and left their mark on the DNA of
today's Europeans, scientists said on Wednesday.
Their study, published in the journal Nature, is the latest to use
sophisticated genetic research to clarify the ancestry of modern
populations.
Experts had thought today's Europeans descended from two other
groups of people.
The first were primitive hunter-gatherers from western Europe who
had lived on the continent since it was first colonized by our
species more than 40,000 years ago. The second were farmers who
migrated into Europe from a region spanning parts of Syria, Turkey
and Iraq around 7,000 years ago.
The new study revealed the role of hunter-gatherers from the
Siberian region who the scientists called "ancient north Eurasians."
 The scientists sequenced the genomes of a farmer who had lived in
Germany about 7,000 years ago and eight hunter-gatherers who had
lived in Luxembourg and Sweden about 8,000 years ago. They then
compared those findings with the genomes of 2,345 people living
today to decipher European ancestry.
"Our study does indeed show that European origins were more complex
than previously imagined," said Iosif Lazaridis, a postdoctoral
research fellow at Harvard Medical School.
"It seems that Europeans - who are often considered one group today
- actually have a complex history with at least three groups
admixing in different proportions in their history," Lazaridis
added.
Almost all Europeans were found to have ancestry from all three of
those ancient groups. The ancient north Eurasians contributed up to
20 percent of the genetics of Europeans, although this was the
smallest proportion among the three ancestral groups.
People in northern Europe, especially the Baltic states, have the
highest proportion of western European hunter-gatherer ancestry,
with up to 50 percent of the DNA of Lithuanians coming from this
group.
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Southern Europeans had more of their genetic ancestry from the
ancient farmers, with up to 90 percent of the DNA of Sardinians
tracing back to these early European immigrants.
These farmers who came from the Near East brought new capabilities
to Europe, domesticating animals including pigs and cows, growing
crops including types of wheat, barley, peas and lentils and using
obsidian sickles for harvest.
Another of the researchers, Johannes Krause, a geneticist at the
University of Tübingen and co-director of the Max Planck Institute
for History and the Sciences in Germany, said the ancient north
Eurasians "connect all modern Europeans and Native Americans."
The findings show they not only mixed with prehistoric Europeans but
also were related to the people who trekked more than 15,000 years
ago across the frozen land bridge that once linked Siberia to Alaska
and spread into the Americas.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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