A 23,000-year-old genome has been discovered on the outskirts of Granada and is one of the oldest ever recorded. The specimen was found in a cave that provides essential conservation conditions for an area that normally experiences a hot and dry climate.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have extracted DNA from the genome and traced it back to a specific group of humans believed to have settled the Iberian Peninsula towards the end of the last Ice Age.
Intact DNA has been linked to a 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium discovered in 2016.
The data from the study provide a crucial piece of the puzzle of the historical civilizations that roamed these lands.
The research confirms that the southern tip of Spain provided a key refuge for humans when much of Europe was covered in ice 20,000 years ago and cave-dwelling humans sheltered from these freezing conditions in rocky caverns.
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