(Johannesburg) — Researchers have reconstructed the oldest human genomes in South Africa to date, from two individuals who lived about 10,000 years ago, shedding light on the region’s demographic history, one of the study’s authors announced Sunday.
The genetic sequence comes from a man and a woman whose remains were discovered at Oakhurst Rock Shelter near the southern coastal town of George, said Victoria Gibbon, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of Cape Town.
It is part of 13 reconstructed sequences of people whose remains were found in this shelter and who lived between 1,300 and 10,000 years ago.
Prior to these discoveries, the oldest genomes reconstructed in the region date back about 2,000 years.
The University of California said in a statement that the Oakhurst study surprisingly reveals that the oldest genomes were genetically similar to those of the San and Khoijo groups who live in the same region today.
“Similar studies in Europe have revealed a history of widespread genetic changes due to human movements over the past 10,000 years,” the study’s lead author, Joshua Gretzinger, said in the statement.
“These new findings from southern 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.
Current DNA data shows that this only changed about 1,200 years ago, when newcomers introduced pastoralism, agriculture and new languages to the region, and began interacting with local hunter-gatherer groups.
Although some of the oldest traces of modern humans can be found in South Africa, they are generally poorly preserved, says Ms. Hans.I Gibbon added that new technologies now allow for this DNA to be obtained.
Unlike Europe and Asia, where the genomes of thousands of people have been reconstructed, fewer than twenty ancient genomes have been found in southern Africa, specifically Botswana, South Africa and Zambia.
“Such sites are rare in South Africa, and Oakhurst has provided insight into the movements and relationships of local people across the landscape for nearly 9,000 years,” she said.I Gibbon.
