Goyet Q116-1

From the third cavern of the Goyet caves, above the little river Samson, comes one of the oldest genomes of Ice Age Europe: a man of the Aurignacian, the culture of Europe's first great cave painters, who lived some thirty-five thousand years ago. He carried a maternal lineage all but vanished from Europe today. His people's ancestry then disappears from the record for fifteen thousand years — invisible through the long age of the mammoth hunters — before resurfacing, after the worst of the last Ice Age, in the Magdalenian reindeer hunters of western Europe, including one buried in the very same cave. Later research would name a whole strand of deep European ancestry after him.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in The genetic history of Ice Age Europe.

Every Ancestrify Global25 report includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported — a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because this is a single real individual, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances — that is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that Goyet Q116-1 is your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about the full G25 analysis.

• 01

  Who was Goyet Q116-1?

  Goyet Q116-1 (c. 33,000 BCE, Goyet Caves, Namur, Belgium) is one of the Deep time entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by one sequenced ancient genome published in the study "The genetic history of Ice Age Europe".

• 02

  What does "matching" Goyet Q116-1 mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported — a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

• 03

  Is Goyet Q116-1 my ancestor?

  No — and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near this individual's in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

• 04

  How do I see my own distance to Goyet Q116-1?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestrify Global25 report — never sold separately. Order the G25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers — browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

• The Peștera Muierii Womanc. 33,000 BCE

• The Salkhit Womanc. 32,000 BCE

• The Sunghir Burialc. 32,000 BCE

• Kostenki Manc. 36,000 BCE

• The Dolní Věstonice Triple Burialc. 29,000 BCE

• Tianyuan Manc. 38,000 BCE

• Oase 1c. 38,000 BCE

• Ust'-Ishim Manc. 43,000 BCE

• The Bacho Kiro Pioneersc. 43,000 BCE

• The Ranis Pioneersc. 45,000–41,000 BCE

• Mal'ta Boyc. 22,500 BCE

• The Zlatý Kůň Womanc. 43,000 BCE