This method requires specifying candidate “source” populations whose genomes are compared to the target, and testing different combinations to find which model fits the data best.

The best-fitting model for NUE001’s ancestry used two primary sources.

The first was ancient North African populations — specifically, Neolithic groups from northwestern and north-central Africa.

These represent the ancient farmers and herders who had inhabited North Africa in the millennia before the formation of the pharaonic state, and who appear in the archaeological record as the builders of the pre-Dynastic cultures that eventually coalesced into unified Egypt.

The second was populations from the eastern Fertile Crescent — ancient individuals from Mesopotamia and surrounding regions, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that is now roughly modern Iraq.