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Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago1–5, but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago6, and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria1,2. They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania7 and Siberia8 who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common., Genome-wide data for the three oldest known modern human remains in Europe, dated to around 45,000 years ago, shed light on early human migrations in Europe and suggest that mixing with Neanderthals was more common than is often assumed.

Between 1930 and 1970, the colonial administration and the Senegalese state established 213 protected areas aimed at preserving the natural heritage and ensuring a future supply of natural resources for the local population. Today, the woody resources from the protected savannas still provide an important source of firewood, construction materials, food, animal fodder and medicine for the local people. The management of these protected areas has until recently been centralised and directed by the authorities without reference to the views of the local societies. This has often led to a lack of concern and understanding by the local people, and the protected savannas have continued to decline through uncontrolled fires, grazing animals, agriculture and logging. The decline in tree density within the savannas has been drastic during the last decades, and the remaining areas of savanna are under increasing pressure as the demands on their resources continue to grow.