- Article
- Published:
Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia
- Qiaomei Fu1,2,
- Heng Li3,4,
- Priya Moorjani3,5,
- Flora Jay6,
- Sergey M. Slepchenko7,
- Aleksei A. Bondarev8,
- Philip L. F. Johnson9,
- Ayinuer Aximu-Petri2,
- Kay Prüfer2,
- Cesare de Filippo2,
- Matthias Meyer2,
- Nicolas Zwyns10,11,
- Domingo C. Salazar-García10,12,13,14,
- Yaroslav V. Kuzmin15,
- Susan G. Keates15,
- Pavel A. Kosintsev16,
- Dmitry I. Razhev7,
- Michael P. Richards10,17,
- Nikolai V. Peristov18,
- Michael Lachmann2,19,
- Katerina Douka20,
- Thomas F. G. Higham20,
- Montgomery Slatkin6,
- Jean-Jacques Hublin10,
- David Reich3,4,21,
- Janet Kelso2,
- T. Bence Viola2,10 &
- …
- Svante Pääbo2
Naturevolume 514, pages445–449 (2014)Cite this article
47kAccesses
978Citations
999Altmetric
Abstract
We present the high-quality genome sequence of a∼45,000-year-old modern human male from Siberia. This individual derives from a population that lived before—or simultaneously with—the separation of the populations in western and eastern Eurasia and carries a similar amount of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians. However, the genomic segments of Neanderthal ancestry are substantially longer than those observed in present-day individuals, indicating that Neanderthal gene flow into the ancestors of this individual occurred 7,000–13,000 years before he lived. We estimate an autosomal mutation rate of 0.4 × 10−9 to 0.6 × 10−9 per site per year, a Y chromosomal mutation rate of 0.7 × 10−9 to 0.9 × 10−9 per site per year based on the additional substitutions that have occurred in present-day non-Africans compared to this genome, and a mitochondrial mutation rate of 1.8 × 10−8 to 3.2 × 10−8 per site per year based on the age of the bone.
This is a preview of subscription content,access via your institution
Access options
Subscription info for Japanese customers
We have a dedicated website for our Japanese customers. Please go tonatureasia.com to subscribe to this journal.
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout






Similar content being viewed by others
Accession codes
Primary accessions
European Nucleotide Archive
Data deposits
All sequence data have been submitted to the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and are available under the following Ust’-Ishim accession number:PRJEB6622. The data from the 25 present-day human genomes are available from (http://www.simonsfoundation.org/life-sciences/simons-genome-diversity-project/) and from (http://cdna.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/altai/).
References
Trinkaus, E. & Ruff, C. B. Diaphyseal cross-sectional geometry of Near Eastern Middle Paleolithic humans: the femur.J. Archaeol. Sci.26, 409–424 (1999)
Brock, F. et al. Reliability of nitrogen content (%N) and carbon:nitrogen atomic ratios (C:N) as indicators of collagen preservation suitable for radiocarbon dating.Radiocarbon54, 879–886 (2012)
Richards, M. P. & Trinkaus, E. Out of Africa: modern human origins special feature: isotopic evidence for the diets of European Neanderthals and early modern humans.Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA106, 16034–16039 (2009)
Meyer, M. et al. A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual.Science338, 222–226 (2012)
Fu, Q. et al. A revised timescale for human evolution based on ancient mitochondrial genomes.Curr. Biol.23, 553–559 (2013)
The Y Chromosome Consortium A nomenclature system for the tree of human Y-chromosomal binary haplogroups.Genome Res.12, 339–348 (2002)
Shapiro, B. et al. A Bayesian phylogenetic method to estimate unknown sequence ages.Mol. Biol. Evol.28, 879–887 (2011)
Patterson, N. et al. Ancient admixture in human history.Genetics192, 1065–1093 (2012)
Olalde, I. et al. Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European.Nature507, 225–228 (2014)
Raghavan, M. et al. Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans.Nature505, 87–91 (2014)
Lazaridis, I. et al. Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans.Nature513, 409–413 (2014)
Prüfer, K. et al. The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains.Nature505, 43–49 (2014)
Li, H. & Durbin, R. Inference of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences.Nature475, 493–496 (2011)
Scally, A. & Durbin, R. Revising the human mutation rate: implications for understanding human evolution.Nature Rev. Genet.13, 745–753 (2012)
Kong, A. et al. Rate ofde novo mutations and the importance of father’s age to disease risk.Nature488, 471–475 (2012)
Langergraber, K. E. et al. Generation times in wild chimpanzees and gorillas suggest earlier divergence times in great ape and human evolution.Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA109, 15716–15721 (2012)
Prüfer, K. et al. The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes.Nature486, 527–531 (2012)
Xue, Y. et al. Human Y chromosome base-substitution mutation rate measured by direct sequencing in a deep-rooting pedigree.Curr. Biol.19, 1453–1457 (2009)
Kuroki, Y. et al. Comparative analysis of chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes unveils complex evolutionary pathway.Nature Genet.38, 158–167 (2006)
Wang, J., Fan, H. C., Behr, B. & Quake, S. R. Genome-wide single-cell analysis of recombination activity and de novo mutation rates in human sperm.Cell150, 402–412 (2012)
Sankararaman, S., Patterson, N., Li, H., Pääbo, S. & Reich, D. The date of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans.PLoS Genet.8, e1002947 (2012)
Reich, D. et al. Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia.Nature468, 1053–1060 (2010)
Reich, D. et al. Denisova admixture and the first modern human dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania.Am. J. Hum. Genet.89, 516–528 (2011)
Skoglund, P. & Jakobsson, M. Archaic human ancestry in East Asia.Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA108, 18301–18306 (2011)
Fenner, J. N. Cross-cultural estimation of the human generation interval for use in genetics-based population divergence studies.Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.128, 415–423 (2005)
McCown, T. D. & Keith, A.The Stone Age of Mount Carmel Vol. 2 (Clarendon, Oxford, 1939)
Vandermeersch, B.Les Hommes Fossiles de Qafzeh (Israel) 319 (Éditions du CNRS, 1981)
Rasmussen, M. et al. An Aboriginal Australian genome reveals separate human dispersals into Asia.Science334, 94–98 (2011)
Hublin, J. J. The earliest modern human colonization of Europe.Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA109, 13471–13472 (2012)
Müller, U. C. et al. The role of climate in the spread of modern humans into Europe.Quat. Sci. Rev.30, 273–279 (2011)
Goebel, T. A., Derevianko, A. P. & Petrin, V. T. Dating the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition at Kara-Bom.Curr. Anthropol.34, 452–458 (1993)
Kuhn, S. L. & Zwyns, N. Rethinking the initial Upper Paleolithic.Quat. Int.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.05.040 (2014)
Bronk Ramsey, C., Scott, M. & van der Plicht, H. Calibration for archaeological and environmental terrestrial samples in the time range 26–50 ka calbp.Radiocarbon.55, 2021–2027 (2013)
Reimer, P. J. et al. IntCal13 and Marine13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0–50,000 Years calbp.Radiocarbon55, 1869–1887 (2009)
Kircher, M., Stenzel, U. & Kelso, J. Improved base calling for the Illumina Genome Analyzer using machine learning strategies.Genome Biol.10, R83 (2009)
Li, H. & Durbin, R. Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows–Wheeler transform.Bioinformatics25, 1754–1760 (2009)
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to P. Gunz, M. Kircher, A. I. Krivoshapkin, P. Nigst, M. Ongyerth, N. Patterson, G. Renaud, U. Stenzel, M. Stoneking and S. Talamo for valuable input, comments and help; T. Pfisterer and H. Temming for technical assistance. Q.F. is funded in part by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA05130202) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2007FY110200); P.A.K. by Urals Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (12-C-4-1014) and Y.V.K. by the Russian Foundation for Basic Sciences (12-06-00045); F.J. and M.S. by the National Institutes of Health of the USA (R01-GM40282); P.J. by the NIH (K99-GM104158); and T.F.G.H. by ERC advanced grant 324139. D.R. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and supported by the National Science Foundation (1032255) and the NIH (GM100233). Major funding for this work was provided by the Presidential Innovation Fund of the Max Planck Society.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IVPP, CAS, Beijing 100044, China,
Qiaomei Fu
Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany,
Qiaomei Fu, Ayinuer Aximu-Petri, Kay Prüfer, Cesare de Filippo, Matthias Meyer, Michael Lachmann, Janet Kelso, T. Bence Viola & Svante Pääbo
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, 02142, Massachusetts, USA
Heng Li, Priya Moorjani & David Reich
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA
Heng Li & David Reich
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA
Priya Moorjani
Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-3140, California, USA
Flora Jay & Montgomery Slatkin
Institute for Problems of the Development of the North, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Tyumen 625026, Russia,
Sergey M. Slepchenko & Dmitry I. Razhev
Omsk Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Expert Criminalistics Center, Omsk 644007, Russia,
Aleksei A. Bondarev
Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, 30322, Georgia, USA
Philip L. F. Johnson
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany,
Nicolas Zwyns, Domingo C. Salazar-García, Michael P. Richards, Jean-Jacques Hublin & T. Bence Viola
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, 95616, California, USA
Nicolas Zwyns
Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7701, South Africa,
Domingo C. Salazar-García
Departament de Prehistòria i Arqueologia, Universitat de València, Valencia 46010, Spain,
Domingo C. Salazar-García
Research Group on Plant Foods in Hominin Dietary Ecology, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany,
Domingo C. Salazar-García
Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia,
Yaroslav V. Kuzmin & Susan G. Keates
Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg 620144, Russia,
Pavel A. Kosintsev
Department of Anthropology, Laboratory of Archaeology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada,
Michael P. Richards
Siberian Cultural Center, Omsk 644010, Russia,
Nikolai V. Peristov
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, 87501, New Mexico, USA
Michael Lachmann
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK,
Katerina Douka & Thomas F. G. Higham
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA
David Reich
- Qiaomei Fu
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Heng Li
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Priya Moorjani
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Flora Jay
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Sergey M. Slepchenko
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Aleksei A. Bondarev
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Philip L. F. Johnson
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Ayinuer Aximu-Petri
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Kay Prüfer
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Cesare de Filippo
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Matthias Meyer
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Nicolas Zwyns
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Domingo C. Salazar-García
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Yaroslav V. Kuzmin
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Susan G. Keates
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Pavel A. Kosintsev
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Dmitry I. Razhev
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Michael P. Richards
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Nikolai V. Peristov
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Michael Lachmann
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Katerina Douka
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Thomas F. G. Higham
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Montgomery Slatkin
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Jean-Jacques Hublin
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- David Reich
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Janet Kelso
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- T. Bence Viola
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
- Svante Pääbo
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
Contributions
Q.F., S.M.S., A.A.B., Y.V.K., J.K., T.B.V. and S.P. designed the research. A.A.P. and Q.F. performed the experiments; Q.F., H.L., P.M., F.J., P.L.F.J., K.P., C.d.F., M.M., M.L., M.S., D.R., J.K. and S.P. analysed genetic data; K.D. and T.F.G.H. performed14C dating; D.C.S.-G. and M.P.R. analysed stable isotope data; N.V.P., P.A.K. and D.I.R. contributed samples and data; S.M.S., A.A.B., N.Z., Y.V.K., S.G.K., J.-J.H. and T.B.V. analysed archaeological and anthropological data; Q.F., J.K., T.B.V. and S.P. wrote and edited the manuscript with input from all authors.
Corresponding authors
Correspondence toQiaomei Fu,David Reich,Janet Kelso orT. Bence Viola.
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
This file contains Supplementary Information Sections 1-18 – see Supplementary Contents for details (PDF 25041 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fu, Q., Li, H., Moorjani, P.et al. Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia.Nature514, 445–449 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13810
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue date:
Share this article
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative
This article is cited by
The Allen Ancient DNA Resource (AADR) a curated compendium of ancient human genomes
- Swapan Mallick
- Adam Micco
- David Reich
Scientific Data (2024)
More than a decade of genetic research on the Denisovans
- Stéphane Peyrégne
- Viviane Slon
- Janet Kelso
Nature Reviews Genetics (2024)
Delayed increase in stone tool cutting-edge productivity at the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in southern Jordan
- Seiji Kadowaki
- Joe Yuichiro Wakano
- Sate Massadeh
Nature Communications (2024)
New dating indicates intermittent human occupation of the Nwya Devu Paleolithic site on the high-altitude central Tibetan Plateau during the past 45,000 years
- Junyi Ge
- Xiaoling Zhang
- Xing Gao
Science China Earth Sciences (2024)
Us and Them: How to Reconcile Archaeological and Biological Data at the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic Transition in Europe?
- Nicolas Teyssandier
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology (2024)


