Prehistoric Near East

The existence of 'Basal Eurasians' is known only through DNA analysis which, in the twenty-first century, has come along in leaps and bounds.

In fact the scientific ability behind DNA analysis developed so much in the early twenty-first century that, by the middle 2010s, it became possible to start picking out evidence of intermixing between Palaeolithic human populations.

The early 'Out of Africa' groups which entered the Near East from Africa between about 70,000-50,000 BC are now known to have had a genetic make-up which no longer exists in an unmixed form (see 'related links' for 'Out of Africa II' in the sidebar to read more on early human types and migrations).

Stone tools of the Emireh culture in the Levant, ascribed as the first local culture which was wholly created by Homo sapiens as opposed to the preceding Mousterian, which had Neanderthal origins

These people likely migrated in small groups over many thousands of years. As they moved outwards into Eurasia they divided up and became isolated from other human groups, whether in the Near East, on the Iranian plateau, or in Central Asia or East Asia.

They provided the origins of later regional groups such as East Asians, Australasians, Ancient North Eurasians, Near East early farmers, and the first European hunter-gatherers, many of whom later developed their own regional sub-groups.

At various times those isolated early groups came together with other, similar groups and intermixed, a process which was repeated again and again across a span of as much as forty or fifty thousand years.

The original 'Out of Africa' genetic make-up became increasingly diffused and then disappeared entirely in its initial unmixed form.

Ghost population

Relatively shortly after that original flourish of migration from about 70,000 BC, one of the aforementioned divisions took place around 52,000-47,000 BC. This created an early human non-African group which would have a notable genetic influence on many later populations.

DNA expert and researcher Iosif Lazaridis, when working at the laboratory of David Reich and his team, named that early group 'Basal Eurasians' as they provided a genetic basis for a wide majority of later Eurasians.

Modern Europeans and Near-Easterners still carry a twenty-five percent genetic share from them. Early Neolithic farmers in Iran and the Levant carried a fifty percent share, even though those two groups differed fundamentally from each other. Modern Iranians and Indians also carry a hefty amount of Basal European genetic make-up.

That initial genetic make-up for Basal Eurasians no longer exists in its unmixed form - hence the term 'ghost population' as it would be hard to pinpoint other than through an archaeological find or DNA analysis - but that make-up remains within all of their descendants through their various sub-divisions.

Another ghost population

One of the Basal Eurasian sub-divisions involved another ghost population, a group which has not survived in its original genetic form.

This was the aforementioned 'Ancient North Eurasians' of North Asia. One of their own sub-divisions, perhaps a major one, was involved in the early phases of the peopling of the Americas.

Main Sources

David Reich - Who we are and how we got here (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Additional Sources

Benjamin W Roberts & Marc Vander Linden (Eds) - Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission

Chris Scarre (Ed) - The Times Atlas of Past Worlds (Guild Publishing, 1988)

O Bar-Yosef & A Belfer-Cohen - From Africa to Eurasia - Early Dispersals (Quaternary International 75, 2001)

Ian Tattersall - Masters of the Planet: The Search for our Human Origins (2012)

Online Sources

University of Oxford News - Before they left Africa, early modern humans were 'culturally diverse'

Science - Stone Age Toolmakers Surprisingly Sophisticated

Bradshaw Foundation: Origins, and First Human Culture Lasted 20,000 Years Longer Than Thought (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft).

Images and text copyright © P L Kessler. An original feature for the History Files.