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In the early Universe finding massive galaxies that have stopped formingstars present an observational challenge as their rest-frame ultravioletemission is negligible and they can only be reliably identified by extremelydeep near-infrared surveys. These have revealed the presence of massive,quiescent early-type galaxies appearing in the universe as early as z$\sim$2,an epoch 3 Gyr after the Big Bang. Their age and formation processes have nowbeen explained by an improved generation of galaxy formation models where theyform rapidly at z$\sim$3-4, consistent with the typical masses and ages derivedfrom their observations. Deeper surveys have now reported evidence forpopulations of massive, quiescent galaxies at even higher redshifts and earliertimes, however the evidence for their existence, and redshift, has reliedentirely on coarsely sampled photometry. These early massive, quiescentgalaxies are not predicted by the latest generation of theoretical models.Here, we report the spectroscopic confirmation of one of these galaxies atredshift z=3.717 with a stellar mass of 1.7$\times$10$^{11}$ M$_\odot$ whoseabsorption line spectrum shows no current star-formation and which has aderived age of nearly half the age of the Universe at this redshift. Theobservations demonstrates that the galaxy must have quickly formed the majorityof its stars within the first billion years of cosmic history in an extreme andshort starburst. This ancestral event is similar to those starting to be foundby sub-mm wavelength surveys pointing to a possible connection between thesetwo populations. Early formation of such massive systems is likely to requiresignificant revisions to our picture of early galaxy assembly.

A massive, quiescent galaxy at redshift of z=3.717