Every people has a route
An atlas of the world's peoples, built only from censuses, language classification and published ancient DNA.
Out of Africa and admixture with Neanderthals
The proportion of Neanderthal-derived DNA in present-day people outside Africa is estimated at 1.5-2.1%.
Prüfer K., Racimo F., Patterson N., et al. (2014). The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains. Nature 505, 43-49. doi:10.1038/nature12886
Ancient Beringians and the peopling of the Americas
The two infants from the Upward Sun River site (Alaska) are dated to around 11,500 years ago.
Moreno-Mayar J. V., Potter B. A., Vinner L., et al. (… Willerslev E.) (2018). Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans. Nature 553, 203-207. doi:10.1038/nature25173
Ancient North Siberians and Siberian ancestry in Fennoscandia
Northeastern Siberia was initially peopled by a previously unknown Palaeolithic population, the 'Ancient North Siberians', distantly related to early West Eurasian hunter-gatherers; the study's 34 ancient genomes date to between 31,000 and 600 years ago.
Sikora M., Pitulko V. V., Sousa V. C., et al. (… Willerslev E.) (2019). The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene. Nature 570, 182-188. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1279-z
Tripartite origins of the Japanese
The Jomon diverged deeply from continental populations 20,000 to 15,000 years ago and maintained a small effective population size of about 1,000 over several millennia.
Cooke N. P., Mattiangeli V., Cassidy L. M., et al. (… Gakuhari T., Nakagome S.) (2021). Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations. Science Advances 7(38), eabh2419. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abh2419
The world's first farmers of the Near East
Genome-wide ancient DNA from 44 ancient Near Easterners living between about 12,000 and 1,400 BC shows that the first farmers of the southern Levant (Israel and Jordan) and the Zagros Mountains (Iran) were strongly genetically differentiated.
Lazaridis I., Nadel D., Rollefson G., et al. (… Reich D.) (2016). Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. Nature 536, 419-424. doi:10.1038/nature19310
Neolithic farmers from Anatolia into Europe
Most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: West European hunter-gatherers, Ancient North Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, and Early European Farmers of mainly Near Eastern origin.
Lazaridis I., Patterson N., Mittnik A., et al. (… Reich D., Krause J.) (2014). Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature 513, 409-413. doi:10.1038/nature13673
Austronesian expansion and the first Remote Oceanians
Language phylogenies place the Austronesian origin in Taiwan approximately 5,230 years ago.
Gray R. D., Drummond A. J., Greenhill S. J. (2009). Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science 323(5913), 479-483. doi:10.1126/science.1166858
The Bantu expansion
Bantu-speaking peoples expanded about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago from western central Africa; the Bantu heartland is the Nigeria/Cameroon frontier.
Patin E., Lopez M., Grollemund R., et al. (… Quintana-Murci L.) (2017). Dispersals and genetic adaptation of Bantu-speaking populations in Africa and North America. Science 356(6337), 543-546. doi:10.1126/science.aal1988
Steppe ancestry reaches South Asia
Based on 523 ancient humans: descendants of Steppe pastoralists, starting around 4,000 years ago, spread via Central Asia to form one of the main ancestral populations of South Asians.
Narasimhan V. M., Patterson N., Moorjani P., et al. (… Reich D.) (2019). The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. Science 365(6457), eaat7487. doi:10.1126/science.aat7487
Eurasian steppe: Scythians, Xiongnu, Huns and Turkic-speaking groups
The study sequenced the genomes of 137 ancient humans (about 1× average coverage), covering a period of 4,000 years.
Damgaard P. de B., Marchi N., Rasmussen S., et al. (… Willerslev E.) (2018). 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes. Nature 557, 369-374. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0094-2
Large-scale migration and the spread of the Slavs
Genome-wide data from 555 ancient individuals, including 359 from Slavic contexts, demonstrate large-scale population movement from Eastern Europe during the sixth to eighth centuries CE.
Gretzinger J., Biermann F., Mager H., et al. (… Krause J.) (2025). Ancient DNA connects large-scale migration with the spread of Slavs. Nature 646, 384-393. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09437-6
Only what is documented
No number on this site is an estimate of ours. Each one is read from a census table, a peer-reviewed paper or a curated database, and links back to it. If a primary document does not print it, we do not show it.
Peoples
Largest by documented headcount. Colour marks the language family, per Glottolog.
Russia's 2021 census
130,587,364 people stated a nationality. Russians made up 80.85%. Below are the next eight.