JOHANNESBURG: An author of the study announced on Sunday that scientists have recreated the oldest human genomes yet discovered in South Africa, from two individuals who lived about 10,000 years ago. This reconstruction helps to better understand how the area was occupied.
According to Victoria Gibbon, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the DNA sequences belonged to a man and a woman whose remains were discovered at a rock shelter close to the southern coastal town of George, some 370 kilometers (230 miles) east of Cape Town.
These were among the thirteen sequences that were rebuilt from individuals whose bones, dating from 1,300 to 10,000 years old, were discovered at the Oakhurst shelter. The oldest genomes that have been reconstructed from the area were approximately 2,000 years old before these findings.
According to a release from UCT, one unexpected discovery from the Oakhurst study was that the oldest genomes shared genetic similarities with modern-day San and Khoekhoe populations residing in the same area.
Lead study author Joscha Gretzinger said in a statement that “simultaneous studies from Europe have revealed a history of large-scale genetic changes due to human movements over the last 10,000 years.”
Gretzinger, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, which took part in the study, stated, “These new results from southernmost Africa are quite different, and suggest a long history of relative genetic stability.”
