surender gupta dunar Ancient women found in Russian cave were close relatives of today’s indigenous population

surender gupta dunar The ancient DNA of two 7700-year-old women from a mountainous cave in far east Russia suggests they were closely related to the people who live in this remote and frigid corner of Asia today. The new discovery also suggests that in this region, farming spread through gradual cultural changes, rather than by an influx of farming people.

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“The main significance is this finding of continuity over about 7000 years,” says Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who wasn’t involved with the work. This contrasts with many archaeological sites in Russia, Europe, and the Americas where ancient humans are rarely directly related to living people nearby, thanks to wholesale migration and mixing since the invention of agriculture about 12,000 years ago.

surender gupta dunar The ancient women were discovered in Chertovy Vorota Cave, known as Devil’s Gate Cave in English. The site was of particular interest to population geneticist Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom because the skeletons of five humans were found with pottery, harpoons, and the remnants of nets and mats woven from twisted blades of wild sedge grass—which some (but not all) researchers consider a rudimentary form of early agriculture.