Genome-wide data from two early Neolithic East Asian individuals dating to 7700 years ago.

Ancient genomes have revolutionized our understanding of Holocene prehistory and, particularly, the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia. In contrast, East Asia has so far received little attention, despite representing a core region at which the Neolithic transition took place independently ~3 millennia after its onset in the Near East. We report genome-wide data from two hunter-gatherers from Devil's Gate, an early Neolithic cave site (dated to ~7.7 thousand years ago) located in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. Both of these individuals are genetically most similar to geographically close modern populations from the Amur Basin, all speaking Tungusic languages, and, in particular, to the Ulchi. The similarity to nearby modern populations and the low levels of additional genetic material in the Ulchi imply a high level of genetic continuity in this region during the Holocene, a pattern that markedly contrasts with that reported for Europe.

V.S. was supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust. R.P. was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) starting grant ADNABIOARC (263441) and the Irish Research Council Advanced Research Project Grant from January 2014 to December 2016. M.H. was supported by ERC Consolidator Grant 310763 “GeneFlow.” This work was supported by the Research Fund (1.140113.01) of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology to J.B. This work was also supported by the Research Fund (14-BR-SS-03) of Civil-Military Technology Cooperation Program to J.B. and Y.S.C. M.G.-L. was supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Doctoral Training Partnerships studentship. A.M. and A.E. were supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant 647787 “LocalAdaptation.” D.G.B. was funded by ERC Investigator grant 295729-CodeX.