Early Neolithic genomes from the eastern Fertile Crescent

Farming was first established in the Neolithic core zone of the Fertile Crescent some 10.000 years ago. Core zone populations were believed to be homogeneous, despite being widespread over the Near and Middle East. We sequenced genomes from Early Neolithic individuals in the Zagros region of Iran (eastern Fertile Crescent) which represent a previously uncharacterized population that is neither ancestral to the first European farmers nor has contributed significantly to the ancestry of modern Europeans. We estimate that these people separated from Early Neolithic peoples in Anatolia some 51- 77,000 years ago and show affinities to modern day Pakistani and Afghan peoples but particularly to Iranian Zoroastrians. Thus multiple hunter-gatherer populations likely adopted farming in SW-Asia, with components of pre-Neolithic population structure were preserved as farming spread into neighboring region.