The second expansion to occur out of the Eurasian Hub was that of the West Eurasian Core, which was ancestral to post-40KYA European hunter-gatherers, West Eurasian hunter-gatherers, and Palaeolithic Siberians, establishing genetic continuity thereafter in West Eurasia.¹

WEC Proper

The oldest unadmixed individual² belonging to the West Eurasian Core is Kostenki14, a ~37KY old individual³ from the Kostenki-Borshchevo complex in the Voronezh region of Russia.⁴ The ~34KY old Upper Palaeolithic⁵ Sunghir individuals from Russia represent a sibling population to Kostenki⁶ with potential input from EEC-related and Basal-related populations despite having the highest proportion of shared alleles with Kostenki14,⁷ albeit most sources represent Sunghir as an unadmixed sibling lineage to Kostenki14.^{8, 9} Additionally, Kostenki14 and the Sunghir individuals belong to similar haplogroups (mitochondrial/maternal haplogroup U2 for Kostenki14,¹⁰ mitochondrial/maternal haplogroup U for the Sunghir individuals,¹¹ Y/paternal haplogroup C1 for Kostenki14, and Y/paternal haplogroup C1a2 for the Sunghir individuals).¹²

Pre-Gravettian Descendants

A subsequent phylogenetic branch derived from a mixture between Initial Upper Palaeolithic Bacho Kiro-related individuals (~29%) and Kostenki-related individuals (~71%) was represented notably by the 35KY old Aurignacian Goyet individual from Belgium (Goyet Q116-1) and the ~29KY old Gravettian Fournol individual from France, with each individual forming its own node along this branch.¹³ Vallini, L., Zampieri, C., Shoaee, M.J. et al. (2024) modeled the Goyet Q116-1 individual similarly, as ~24% EEC and ~76% WEC.¹⁴ A node along this branch (preceding the split between Goyet Q116-1 and the Fournol individual) also contributed to the Gravettian Vestonice cluster.¹⁵ ndividuals genetically similar to the Fournol individual, forming the Fournol cluster, were typically buried in caves and possessed anthropogenic marks.¹⁶ Similarly to the Sunghir individuals, the Fournol individual belonged to Y/paternal haplogroup C1a2,¹⁷ suggesting common paternal ancestry at some point. However, unlike the Sunghir individuals, the Fournol individual belonged to mitochondrial/maternal haplogroup V20.¹⁸ The IUP Bacho Kiro population would ultimately be replaced by a population related to the Goyet Q116-1 individual post-~35KYA, with this population sharing more alleles with WEC populations and harboring less Neanderthal ancestry.¹⁹

Both aforementioned phylogenetic branches would contribute to subsequent populations during the Gravettian era, creating separate clusters known as the Vestonice cluster and the aforementioned Fournol cluster.²⁰

WEC in the Gravettian

The Vestonice cluster, archaeologically associated with the Gravettian period, appeared in Europe around 30KYA²¹ with the Dolni Vestonice camp, which possessed some of the earliest kilns in human history.²² The Vestonice cluster was descended from a mixture of a Sunghir-like population (~64%) and a node along the Goyet Q116-1 and Fournol branch that preceded the split between the two aforementioned individuals (~36%),²³ however, Vallini, L., Zampieri, C., Shoaee, M.J. et al. (2024) model Vestonice16, one of the three Vestonice proper individuals analyzed in Posth, C., Yu, H., Ghalichi, A. et al. (2023), almost entirely WEC, with one of the members of the larger Vestonice cluster having more EEC ancestry (meaning that Vestonice individuals not analyzed by Vallini, L., Zampieri, C., Shoaee, M.J. et al. (2024) may have more EEC ancestry than Vestonice16 as well).²⁴ Moreover, the Vestonice cluster includes various individuals from Central, East, and Southern Europe during the Gravettian era (beginning in the East and later expanding westward), with individuals buried with grave goods or ornaments and ochre, either via an open-air burial or a cave burial.²⁵

With the advent of the Last Glacial Maximum came a demographic decline likely due to the climactic changes. Consequently, significant genetic shifts occurred, driven by populations residing in ecological refugia, though some of the aforementioned populations persisted and later reappeared via genetic influences on subsequent populations.²⁶

Sources

^{1, 2, 7, 14, 24} Vallini, L., Zampieri, C., Shoaee, M.J. et al. The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal. Nat Commun 15, 1882 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46161-7

^{3, 6, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 26} Posth, C., Yu, H., Ghalichi, A. et al. Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers. Nature 615, 117-126 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05726-0

⁴Dinnis, R., Bessudnov, A., Reynolds, N., Devièse, T., Pate, A., Sablin, M., Sinitsyn, A., & Higham, T. (2019). New data for the Early Upper Paleolithic of Kostenki (Russia). Journal of human evolution, 127, 21-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2018.11.012

^{5, 11, 12}Martin Sikora et al. ,Ancient genomes show social and reproductive behavior of early Upper Paleolithic foragers.Science358,659-662(2017).DOI:10.1126/science.aao1807

⁸Leonardo Vallini, Giulia Marciani, Serena Aneli, Eugenio Bortolini, Stefano Benazzi, Telmo Pievani, Luca Pagani, Genetics and Material Culture Support Repeated Expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a Population Hub Out of Africa, Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 14, Issue 4, April 2022, evac045, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac045

^{9, 21}Lazaridis, Iosif & Belfer-Cohen, Anna & Mallick, Subhashis & Patterson, Nick & Cheronet, Olivia & Rohland, Nadin & Jakeli, Nino & Kvavadze, Eliso & Lordkipanidze, David & Matzkevich, Zinovi & Meshveliani, Tengiz & Culleton, Brendan & Kennett, Douglas & Pinhasi, Ron & Reich, David. (2018). Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry. 10.1101/423079.

¹⁰Krause J, Briggs AW, Kircher M, et al. A complete mtDNA genome of an early modern human from Kostenki, Russia. Current Biology : CB. 2010 Feb;20(3):231-236. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.068. PMID: 20045327.

¹⁹Hajdinjak, M., Mafessoni, F., Skov, L., Vernot, B., Hübner, A., Fu, Q., Essel, E., Nagel, S., Nickel, B., Richter, J., Moldovan, O. T., Constantin, S., Endarova, E., Zahariev, N., Spasov, R., Welker, F., Smith, G. M., Sinet-Mathiot, V., Paskulin, L., Fewlass, H., … Pääbo, S. (2021). Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry. Nature, 592(7853), 253-257. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03335-3

²²Florek, S. (n.d.). Dolni Vestonice - Archaeological Site. The Australian Museum. https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/international-collection/dolni-vstonice-archaeological-site/