The earliest human genome has been found in southern Spain by an international research team. The genome belonged to a 23,000-year-old human being who lived during the peak of the last Ice Age, when sea levels were vastly lower than they are now.

It was discovered in the Malalmuerzo cave on the southern Iberian Peninsula. The Malalmuerzo may have served as a shelter from the continent’s harsh temperatures, while Iberian Peninsula was one of the warmest areas of Europe at the time.

“This genome proves the persistence of some lineages on the Iberian Peninsula and shows that this was the only place in Europe where populations withstood the Last Glacial Maximum. The peninsula was their refuge,” said the main author of the study, Carles Lalueza-Fox, who is a geneticist at Spain’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology.