In Israel, for example, researchers found a few distinctively modern human skeletons that are between 120,000 and 90,000 years old.
Advertisement
A decade ago, some researchers proposed the controversial idea that an early wave of modern humans left Africa more than 60,000 years ago via a so-called coastal or southern route.
The third paper out today, which added almost 400 new genomes to an existing dataset, discovered something curious about Papuans: at least 2 percent of the modern Papuan genome comes from a population other than the one that left Africa to set up shop in Eurasia.
The research is part of a series of three studies which looked at the genetics diversity from typically understudied regions around the world to provide insight into the migration of modern humans out of Africa.
When the migration from Africa occurred, the populations found a new land, called Sahul.
An extensive DNA study confirms what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have always believed: they’re the oldest living civilisation on the planet.
Once in Australia, the ancestors of today’s aborigine communities remained nearly completely isolated from the rest of the world’s population.
A second study led by a Harvard Medical School team, and also published today in Nature, mapped the genomes of 300 people from 142 diverse populations worldwide, looking for any genetic changes associated with the evolution of modern human traits, such as painting cave art and the use of sophisticated tools – but didn’t find any.
The study showed that they were probably the first humans to cross an ocean.
Scientists are still trying to reconstruct that expansion.
Previous research unearthed bones from a mysterious extinct branch of the human family tree from Denisova cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains.
Genetic details also give glimpses into Aboriginal society.
New DNA research from an global team of scientists shows the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papua New Guineans diverged from Eurasian populations between 51,000 and 72,000 years ago and that there is huge genetic diversity among Aboriginals. Language experts are adamant that Pama-Nyungan languages are much younger, dating back 4,000 years, and coinciding with the appearance of new stone technologies in the archaeological record. The authors conclude that it points to an early wave of human migration out of Africa roughly 120,000 years ago which ultimately reached, genetically speaking, today’s Papua New Guinea.
Also our genome data do not show any significant gene flow events into Australia from India around 6,000 years ago, suggested by previous research. But their study finds a more gradual split into the groups that went on to populate west and east Eurasia.
We know that tens of thousands of years ago, humans migrated out of Africa – but the question is, when, and how many times?
“The genetic diversity among Aboriginal Australians is incredible”, said Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, first author of the paper.
The fact that indigenous Australian civilization is the oldest on the face of the globe is now being corroborated by DNA evidence.
‘One population arrives at a very early time.
To date, only three Aboriginal Australian whole genome sequences have been described – one from a historical tuft of hair from Australia’s Western Desert and two other historic sequences whose exact origins were unknown – making this study the most expansive investigation into indigenous Australian origins yet.
“This story has been missing for a long time in science”, said Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen, who led the study.
Advertisement
They modeled the likely genetic impact of different human dispersals from Africa and towards Australia, looking for patterns that best matched the data they acquired.
