An Aboriginal Australian Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia
Abstract
We present an Aboriginal Australian genomic sequence obtained from a 100-year-old lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal man from southern Western Australia in the early 20th century. We detect no evidence of European admixture and estimate contamination levels to be below 0.5%. We show that Aboriginal Australians are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia, possibly 62,000 to 75,000 years ago. This dispersal is separate from the one that gave rise to modern Asians 25,000 to 38,000 years ago. We also find evidence of gene flow between populations of the two dispersal waves prior to the divergence of Native Americans from modern Asian ancestors. Our findings support the hypothesis that present-day Aboriginal Australians descend from the earliest humans to occupy Australia, likely representing one of the oldest continuous populations outside Africa.
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Published In
Science
Volume 334 | Issue 6052
7 October 2011
7 October 2011
Copyright
Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Submission history
Received: 14 July 2011
Accepted: 13 September 2011
Published in print: 7 October 2011
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments: Our work was endorsed by the Goldfields Land and Sea Council, the organization representing the Aboriginal Traditional Owners of the Goldfields region, including the cultural (and possibly the biological) descendents of the individual who provided the hair sample. See (4) for letter. Data are accessible through NCBI Sequence Read Archive SRA035301.1 or through http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100010. We note the following additional affiliations: S.T. also works for the Australian Federal Police; J.D. is a partner in Dortch & Cuthbert Pty. Ltd.; P.F. is director of Genetic Ancestor Ltd. and Fluxus Technology Ltd.; and C.D.B. serves as an unpaid consultant for 23andMe. For author contributions and extended acknowledgements, see (4).
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- Morten Rasmussen et al.
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