If true (the two other papers find little support for it), this suggests that there must have been a migration across Asia prior to the big one about 60,000 years ago, and that anatomically modern human populations left Africa earlier than many think.
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“The genetic diversity among Indigenous Australians is incredible”, said study first author Dr. Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, from the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, the Centre for GeoGenetics of Copenhagen and the University of Bern. After an exodus some 72,000 years ago, they split away from the larger genetic group (along with their future neighbors in Papua New Guinea) 58,000 years ago and arrived on the Australian continent around 8,000 years later.
Writing in the academic journal Nature, Luca Pagani, Mait Metspalu and colleagues describe hints of this pioneer group in their analysis of DNA in people from the Oceanian nation of Papua New Guinea. Now, three studies have collected new, high-quality data from 787 human genomes from more than 280 geographically diverse populations around the world, including typically understudied and rapidly disappearing groups. This should also put to bed the very odd narrative – often deployed by opponents of treaty and contitutional recognition – who argue against all available evidence that Indigenous Australians were not the first humans on the continent.
The aboriginal genomes were compared with genetic information about other populations, which gave them confidence a single mass migration out of Africa was what likely happened.
Overall, the evidence shows that the vast majority of modern human ancestry outside of Africa comes from a single exit from Africa, said David Reich of Harvard Medical School, an author of the 142-population paper.
The researchers sequenced the genomes of 83 Aboriginal Australians, as well as 25 Papuans from New Guinea.
The study has revealed that not only did Indigenous Australians first come to Australia some 50,000 years ago, they remained nearly entirely isolated on the continent until around 4,000 years ago.
Previous research unearthed bones from a mysterious extinct branch of the human family tree from Denisova cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains.
“We were trying to break down the distinction between scientists and indigenous people”, added Lambert, who asserted the importance of indigenous communities playing an active role in research about themselves. This also indicates that all non-African people are descended from a single population movement out of the continent. The Aboriginal population has been a part of the heritage of Australia for the past tens of thousands of years.
‘They are genetically rather different to one-another and that’s a really important point’.
This means that indigenous Australians are the longest running civilization in the world, a longstanding claim that has now finally been proven.
“Discussions have been intense as to what extent Indigenous Australians represent a separate Out-of-Africa exit to those of Asians and Europeans”, study co-lead author Prof.
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“The high-resolution portrait of human genetic diversity afforded by these studies allows new inferences to be made about our migration out of Africa”, the University of Washington’s Serena Tucci and Joshua Akey write in a News and Views article. A second study, led by Danish geneticist Eske Willersev, with far fewer African samples, used similar methods to show that divergence within Africa also started before the migration, around 125,000 years ago. “Yes, there are populations in Africa that are older, but we have no idea if they stayed in the same area in Africa for as long a time”.
