DNA confirms Aboriginal culture one of Earth’s oldest

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‘ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS ARE descendents of the first people to leave Africa up to 75,000 years ago, a genetic study has found, confirming they may have the oldest continuous culture on the planet.

Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, who led the study, says Aboriginal Australians were the first modern humans to traverse unknown territory in Asia and Australia. “It was a truly amazing journey that must have demanded exceptional survival skills and bravery,” he says.

A century-old lock of hair, given by a West Australian indigenous man to an anthropologist, has led to the discovery that ancestors of Aboriginal Australians reached Asia at least 24,000 years before another wave of migration that populated Europe and Asia.

Experts from the University of Western Australia (UWA) and Murdoch University were part of an international team that analysed DNA from the hair and found no hereditary material from European immigrants to Australia. This made the man’s DNA a perfect candidate for looking at the history of Aboriginal migration.

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Aboriginal Australians first to cross Asia - Studying his DNA, the researchers found that the ancestors of Australian Aboriginals had split from the first modern human populations to leave Africa, 64,000 to 75,000 years ago. Dr Joe Dortch, a scientist at UWA, says the discovery turns on its head the existing theory that Aboriginals arrived here less than 50,000 years ago. The findings are detailed today in the journal Science.

“[The discovery] strongly supports the idea that Aborigines were [part of] an early and separate wave of human expansion out of Africa, before the subsequent wave that established Europeans and Asians,” says Professor Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. “However, while this is a major step forward, the key unresolved question remains the unique story of Aboriginal history within Australia.”

“This new DNA study powerfully confirms that Aboriginal Australians are one of the oldest living populations in the world, certainly the oldest outside of Africa,” agrees evolutionary biologist Professor Darren Curnoe of UNSW. “Australians are truly one of the world’s great human populations and a very ancient one at that, with deep connections to the Australian continent and broader Asian region. About this now there can be no dispute.”

Scientists have used DNA evidence from a lock of hair found in WA in the 1920s to map the early migration of humans from Africa to Australia. ’ (Source)

To help Jean-Luc better understand DNA and migration he shows him another short video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qlTQorAigA

Let’s continue - Oldest living population in the world

Start at the beginning – Jean-Luc travels through time