The origin of Australian aborigines, older than expected
2011/11/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
90 years ago, an Australian aboriginal gave a hair to an anthropologist. Now, an international group led by the University of Copenhagen has sequenced the DNA of this hair and, based on the result, has concluded that aborigines are descendants of people migrated from Africa 70,000 years ago. According to this, the majority of the Asian population is prior to the migration it currently originated, 24,000 years earlier.
Therefore, the research has annulled the main hypothesis to date. In fact, until now Australian aborigines were considered to be descendants of a single migration from Africa to Europe and from there to Asia. However, the hair DNA of the aborigines has shown that their ancestors crossed with human species found along the way, both Neanderthals and denisoveses. On the contrary, the rest of the populations that inhabit Southeast Asia have no denisovese footprint.
The new hypothesis coincides with extensive genetic research conducted by the Max Planck Institute. Considering all the results, they now consider that there were at least two major migrations throughout Asia: One was the origin of the Australian aborigines and other populations of New Guinea and Oceania, and later of most Asians. It seems that only some of the first migrations were crossed with denisoveses and, in addition, denisoveses were missing when the second migration arrived in Asia.
However, there are still many questions to answer and they will have to do more studies to resolve them.
