Both traditions span wide geographic areas within their respective regions, suggesting the transmission of cultural conventions across substantial distances.

The question of whether this similarity reflects shared genetic ancestry — the same population carrying a cultural tradition in both directions — or shared cultural transmission without direct genetic connection, or independent development of similar symbolic conventions, has been debated without resolution.

The ancient genomic data adds a new dimension to this debate.

If the Ancient North Eurasian population, as represented by the Mal’ta boy, was genetically connected to some of the ancestral populations of modern Europeans — as the data suggests — then the shared artistic tradition between Mal’ta and Upper Paleolithic Europe might reflect not just cultural transmission but shared ancestry.

The makers of the European Venus figurines and the makers of the Mal’ta figurines might have been, in a meaningful sense, distant relatives — members of the same broad genetic family, carrying related cultural traditions across the vast expanse of Ice Age Eurasia.