7,700 year-old, low coverage (<0.1X in total) early Neolithic genomes from the Devil's Gate Cave in the Russian Far East.

Ancient genomes have revolutionised our understanding of Holocene prehistory in Western Eurasia, but East Asia, despite representing a region where the Neolithic transition took place independently of this process in Western Eurasia, has so far received little attention. Here we report genomic data from two hunter-gatherers from an early Neolithic site, Devil’s Gate (~7.7 kya) in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. These individuals are genetically most similar to geographically close populations from the Amur Basin all speaking Tungusic languages, in particular the Ulchi, implying a high level of continuity in this region during the Holocene, markedly contrasting with the situation in Europe.