Researchers have reconstructed the oldest human genome ever found in southern Africa, belonging to two individuals who lived about 10,000 years ago, providing a better understanding of how the region was settled, the study’s author said Sunday.
The genetic sequences belonged to a man and a woman whose remains were found in a stone deposit about 370 kilometres (230 miles) east of the south coast town of George, according to professor of biological anthropology at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in Victoria. Cape Town. Gibbon.
These were among 13 sequences from people whose remains were found at the Oakhurst Shelter and lived between 1,300 and 10,000 years ago. Before these discoveries, the oldest genomes reconstructed from the site were about 2,000 years old.
A surprise finding of the Oakhurst study was that the oldest genomes were genetically similar to the genomes of San and Khoeho groups living in the same region today, UCT said in a statement.
“Similar studies in Europe have revealed a history of large-scale genetic changes caused by human movements over the last 10,000 years,” Josha Gretzinger, lead author of the study, said in a statement.
“These new results from South Africa are quite different and point to a long history of relative genetic stability,” said Gretzinger of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who participated in the research.
DNA evidence suggests this changed only about 1,200 years ago, when newcomers introduced nomadism, agriculture and new languages to the region, and began to interact with local hunter-gatherer groups. Some of the world’s earliest evidence of modern humans can be traced to southern Africa, but it is often poorly preserved, Gibbon told AFP. New technologies have made it possible to extract this DNA, he said.
Unlike Europe and Asia, where thousands of human genomes have been reconstructed, fewer than two dozen ancient genomes have been reconstructed in southern Africa, particularly in Botswana, South Africa and Zambia.
“Sites like this are rare in Southern Africa, and Oakhurst has provided a better understanding of local population movements and relationships across the landscape for almost 9,000 years,” Gibbon said.
Source: Port Altele
