DNA confirms coastal trek to Australia
Submitted by coldrum on Sunday, 27 September 2009 Page Views: 2520
DiscoveriesDNA evidence linking Indian tribes to Australian Aboriginal people supports the theory humans arrived in Australia from Africa via a southern coastal route through India, say researchers.The research, lead by Dr Raghavendra Rao from the Anthropological Survey of India, is published in the current edition of BMC Evolutionary Biology.
One theory is that modern humans arrived in Australia via an inland route through central Asia but Rao says most scientists believe modern humans arrived via the coast of South Asia. But he says there has never been any evidence to confirm a stop-off in India until now.
Rao and colleagues sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of 966 people from traditional tribes in India. They report that several of the Indians studied had two regions of their mitochondrial DNA that were identical to those found in modern day Australian Aboriginal people.
Rao and colleagues used special computer programs to predict that a common ancestor existed, between the Indian population and Aboriginal Australians, up to 50,000 years ago.
Skeletal remains, dating back between 40 - 60,000 years from Lake Mungo in New South Wales, also support the theory that modern human arrived in Australia at least half a century ago, he says.
He says now that a mitochondrial DNA link has been found between tribal Indian populations and Aboriginal Australians it would be interesting to see if a connection exists through the Y chromosome, where DNA is passed only from fathers to sons.
For more, see www.abc.net.au.
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