DNA double helix. Credit: Public Domain
Researchers have reconstructed the genomes of two humans found in South Africa that lived about 10,000 years ago, providing a better understanding of the conditions in which people in the region lived, the study authors announced Sunday.
Victoria Gibbon, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), said the genetic sequence belonged to a man and a woman whose bodies were found hidden under a rock near the southern coastal town of George, about 370 kilometres east of Cape Town.
These are among 13 sequences recovered from the remains of people found at Oakhurst Shelter who lived between 1,300 and 10,000 years ago. Prior to these discoveries, the oldest genome recovered from the area was about 2,000 years old.
A surprising finding from the Oakhurst study was that the oldest genome was genetically similar to those of San and Khoikhoe peoples who currently live in the same area, UCT said in a statement.
“Similar studies in Europe have uncovered a history of large-scale genetic change due to human migration over the past 10,000 years,” Joscha Gretzinger, the study’s lead author, said in a statement.
“The new results from deep southern Africa are very different and suggest a long history of relative genetic stability,” said Gretzinger of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who worked on the study.
This changed about 1,200 years ago, according to the DNA data, when newcomers arrived, bringing livestock farming, agriculture and a new language to the region and beginning to interact with local hunter-gatherer groups.
Gibbon told AFP that some of the oldest evidence of modern humans can be traced back to South Africa but tends to be poorly preserved. He said new technology had made it possible to access this DNA.
Unlike Europe and Asia, where thousands of individual genomes have been reconstructed, fewer than two dozen ancient genomes have been recovered from Southern Africa, specifically Botswana, South Africa and Zambia.
“Sites like this are rare in Southern Africa and Oakhurst has allowed us to better understand the movements and relationships of local people over almost 9,000 years,” Gibbon said.
Further information: Joscha Gretzinger et al., “Oakhurst Rock Shelter Demonstrates 9,000 Years of Genetic Continuity in Southern Africa,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-024-02532-3
© 2024 AFP
Source: Researchers Decode Oldest Human DNA Ever Discovered in South Africa (September 22, 2024) Retrieved September 22, 2024 https://phys.org/news/2024-09-decode-oldest-human-dna-south.html
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