Zlatý kůň woman

The Zlatý kůň woman is the fossil of an ancient woman, an Early European modern human, dated to around 43,000 years ago. She was discovered in the Koněprusy Caves in the Czech Republic in 1950.

Zlatý kůň woman

Skeletal remains
Common name	Zlatý kůň woman
Species	Human
Age	c. 43,000 years
Place discovered	Koněprusy, Central Bohemia, Czechia
Date discovered	1950

Location of the Zlatý kůň fossil, with an age of at least ~43,000 years, which has yielded genome-wide data.

This individual's affiliation to contemporaneous material cultures is unclear. The remains may be part of an early phase of a culture such as the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP); they do not belong to later phases of the IUP or Mousterian cultures. IUP represents one of the earliest modern human cultures in Europe, which expanded into Eurasia more than 45,000 years ago, following humanity's dispersal out of Africa.^[1][2][3]

The Zlatý kůň individual is not only one of the oldest anatomically modern humans to be successfully genetically sequenced, but her genome is additionally part of a lineage basal to and chronologically preceding the subsequent genetic separation of East Eurasian and West Eurasian populations.^[4] Her mtDNA haplogroup is part of a basal branch of N and is most closely related to paleolithic remains from Bacho Kiro cave (Bulgaria) and Salkhit (Mongolia) and, more distantly, to later remains from Chukchi Peninsula (modern far eastern Russia) and indigenous Australians.^[5] Like other, similarly dated ancient DNA samples, the Zlatý kůň woman does not appear to have been directly ancestral to modern Europeans or Asians.^{[6] [1]}

Other early modern humans that have been directly dated to this period include:^[5]

• an individual from 46,000 to 44,000 years ago in the Bacho Kiro cave, located in present-day Bulgaria;
• a 45,000-year-old Ust'-Ishim man (no continuity with later Eurasians);
• a 40,000-year-old Tianyuan man, who is more closely related to modern Asians and Native Americans;
• Oase 1 (no shared ancestry with later Eurasians);
• Fumane 2, c. 40,000 BP.

These early Eurasian populations probably mated with Neanderthals in the period between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, likely during the initial phase of their expansion into the Middle East, and they carried ~2–9% Neanderthal ancestry in their genomes.^[7] It has also been proposed^{[by whom?]} that early modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals in Europe for a period of about 3,000–5,000 years.^[1] The Zlatý kůň woman had a small amount of Neanderthal admixture, going back 70 or 80 generations.^[7]

Goyet Kostenki Sungir Zlatý kůň Ust'-Ishim Oase Bacho Kiro Tianyuan Initial Upper Paleolithic wave "East-Eurasian" Phylogenetic position of ancient Upper Paleolithic Eurasian specimens.