Ust'-Ishim man: settlement of Siberia and the oldest modern-human genome
- Date
- c. 45,000 years ago
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Western Siberia (Irtysh River, Russia)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
A single fossilised femur eroding from a bank of the Irtysh River in western Siberia, discovered in 2008, belonged to a man who lived around 45,000 years ago.
Directly radiocarbon dated, the Ust'-Ishim individual is the oldest securely dated modern human known from outside Africa and the Near East, and his remarkably well-preserved DNA yielded one of the earliest complete human genomes ever sequenced. The genome shows that he belonged to a population living before or close to the split between western and eastern Eurasians. Crucially, he carried about the same proportion of Neanderthal ancestry as living Eurasians, but in much longer unbroken segments, which allowed researchers to estimate that Neanderthal interbreeding occurred roughly 7,000–13,000 years before he lived — placing that admixture event at around 50,000–60,000 years ago. The find demonstrates that modern humans had reached the high latitudes of Siberia very early in the Out-of-Africa expansion.
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Related exploration & colonisation events
- Modern humans enter Europe and the Aurignacian beginsc. 45,000 years ago
- Dmanisi: the earliest well-dated humans in Eurasiac. 1.8 million years ago
- Pre-Clovis America: Monte Verde and the Pacific coastal routec. 16,000–14,500 years ago
- Settlement of Sahul: human occupation of Australia at Madjedbebec. 65,000 years ago
- White Sands footprints: humans in the Americas during the Last Glacial Maximumc. 23,000–21,000 years ago
- Earliest human occupation of the high-altitude Tibetan Plateauc. 40,000 – 30,000 years ago
Further reading
The wider story
The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian
Vivid narrative of the Greek and Roman worlds that shaped Europe.
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