The history of modern human dispersal out of Africa is not, as it is sometimes presented, a single triumphant expansion of a single founding population across the globe.

It was a complex, multi-phase process involving multiple populations, multiple waves of dispersal, complex interactions between expanding and declining groups, and significant losses along the way.

Some early modern human populations that reached various parts of the world appear to have left no descendants in living humans — their lineages ended, for whatever combination of reasons, without contributing to the gene pool of the present.

Zlatý kůň’s population appears to be one such case in Europe, and similar patterns have been identified in other regions.