Most Copper Age and Neolithic European individuals show a mixture of Anatolian farmer ancestry and indigenous European hunter-gatherer ancestry — with the proportions varying by region and time period.

In many Neolithic European populations, the Anatolian farmer ancestry is dominant but there is a meaningful component of hunter-gatherer ancestry as well.

Ötzi’s genome showed more than 92 percent Anatolian early farmer ancestry — an unusually high proportion that exceeded that of any other contemporaneous population sample from Europe in the fourth millennium BCE.

The hunter-gatherer component, which is visible in most other Copper Age Europeans, was essentially absent or minimal in Ötzi’s genetic profile.

This finding led the researchers to conclude that Ötzi belonged to a population that had been somewhat genetically isolated from the broader currents of European population history.