Ancient DNA indicates that the earliest European genomes survived the ice and and provides new details on Neanderthal interbreeding and a mysterious human lineage. The genome, taken from a 36,000 year old skeleton, suggests an early divergence of Eurasians after leaving Africa. The genome enables scientists to better assess the point at which ‘admixture,’ or interbreeding, between Eurasians and Neanderthals took place. This latest research also highlights previously unknown population lineage dating back to the first population separations after humans left Africa.

The ground-breaking new DNA study, from a man who lived in Kostenski, western Russia, indicates that genetic ancestry from the earliest humans survived the peak point of the last ice age: the Last Glacial Maximum. The study also reveals a more accurate timescale for interbreeding among humans and Neanderthals, and is evidence of early contact between the hunter-gatherers in Europe and those in the Middle East, who would go on to develop agriculture and disperse into Europe approximately 8,000 years ago, transforming the European gene pool.

The study was led by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen and included an international team of researchers from institutions such as University of Cambridge’s Departments of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Zoology, and is published today in the journal Science.

The study co-author, Dr. Marta Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES), said in a statement, “That there was continuity from the earliest Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic, across a major glaciation, is a great insight into the evolutionary processes underlying human success.”

According to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Neanderthals are the closest extinct human relative.