A recent study of ancient DNA reveals the current human populations in Eurasia and East Asia separated between 36,200 and 45,000 years ago.

There's a genetic unity between modern Europeans and ancient Europeans, according to findings from the study of a newly discovered prehistoric Russian man's DNA.

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The study also suggests a complex network of sexual exchange may have possibly occurred across Europe over the past 50,000 years. The genetic unity also helps to identify when modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, researchers said.

One of the skeletons is of a young man that died at least 36,200 years ago near Kostenki-Borshchevo in what is now western Russia. His skeleton was excavated in 1954.

The DNA found in a tiny leg bone revealed that it's also part of the genes of modern Europeans and not East Asians, according to a geneticist Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of the study.

"Virtually all the major genetic components you find in contemporary Europeans are present among the earliest Europeans. I don't think many would have predicted this," said lead study author Eske Willerslev.

Using modern techniques of DNA sampling, researchers were able to analyze the DNA from the Russian's left shinbone known as K14.

After sequencing the complete genome of the man, he became the second-oldest modern human genome ever sequenced, next to 45,000-year-old thighbone of a man found in western Siberia.

Indeed, researchers are starting to uncover the modern European genome may date farther back than scientists had thought, all the way to the Upper Paleolithic Era between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago.

TagsDNA, Ancient Europeans, Konstenki fossil, Russian Man DNA, neanderthals, DNA Sequencing, European genome, ancient skeleton