We all did come from Africa

Aborigines and Europeans share the same African roots and both emerged from a wave of African migrations more than 50,000 years ago, a new study has revealed.

Washington, May 8 : Aborigines and Europeans share the same African roots and both emerged from a wave of African migrations more than 50,000 years ago, a new study has revealed.

According to co-author, University of Cambridge researcher, Toomas Kivisild, both populations can be traced back to the same founders.

The findings, authors said, could strike another nail into the coffin of the "multiregional" hypothesis that suggests that humans evolved separately in different parts of the world.

For their study, the scientists took blood samples from modern Aborigines and Asian populations and compared their DNA, then tracing the family tree backward through their mitochondrial DNA (the female lineage) and Y chromosome DNA (the male lineage).

Assuming an average DNA mutation rate, the scientists calculated how many years had passed since the populations split.

They found that all of the Australian lineages fell within four DNA branches, which are associated with the exodus of modern humans from Africa between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.

"We could trace back to where the branches join by counting mutations in the DNA," National Geographic quoted study co-author Phillip Endicott of the University of Oxford, as saying.

"This result provides strong evidence for the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis and gives the multiregionalists much less room to move," said Richard Gillespie, visiting fellow in the Division of Archaeology and Natural History at the Australian National University in Canberra, who was not involved in the study.

The new DNA results further showed that modern humans and more ancient populations, such as the Neanderthals, never intermingled.

The research will be published in tomorrow's edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

ANI