Kostenki Man

On the Don River, where Ice Age hunters built houses from mammoth bones, lived a man whose genome — 37,000 years old — showed that the deep ancestry of Europeans was already in place at the dawn of the Upper Palaeolithic. Through ice ages and migrations, a genetic thread connects Kostenki Man across a thousand generations to Europeans alive today.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Genomic structure in Europeans dating back at least 36,200 years.

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 Kostenki Man is your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about the full G25 analysis.

• 01

  Who was Kostenki Man?

  Kostenki Man (c. 36,000 BCE, Kostenki, Russia) is one of the Deep time entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by one sequenced ancient genome published in the study "Genomic structure in Europeans dating back at least 36,200 years".

• 02

  What does "matching" Kostenki Man 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 Kostenki Man 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 Kostenki Man?

  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:

• Tianyuan Manc. 38,000 BCE

• Oase 1c. 38,000 BCE

• The Peștera Muierii Womanc. 33,000 BCE

• Goyet Q116-1c. 33,000 BCE

• The Salkhit Womanc. 32,000 BCE

• The Sunghir Burialc. 32,000 BCE

• Ust'-Ishim Manc. 43,000 BCE

• The Bacho Kiro Pioneersc. 43,000 BCE

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

• The Dolní Věstonice Triple Burialc. 29,000 BCE

• The Zlatý Kůň Womanc. 43,000 BCE

• Mal'ta Boyc. 22,500 BCE