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Vol. 28 Fall 2017 - Print the Fall 2017 Issue

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Fall 2017, Cover Stories, Daily News

Modern humans emerged more than

300,000 years ago, new study suggests
Thu, Sep 28, 2017

Like 86
Research on ancient genomes supports recent
archaeological evidence of a much earlier origin for
Homo sapiens, our own human species.

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9/28/2017 Modern humans emerged more than 300,000 years ago, new study suggests | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past

UPPSALA UNIVERSITYA genomic

analysis of ancient human remains from
KwaZulu-Natal revealed that southern Africa
has an important role to play in writing the
history of humankind. A research team from
Uppsala University, Sweden, the Universities of
Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, South
Africa, presents their results in the September
28th early online issue of Science.

The team sequenced the genomes of seven

individuals who lived in southern Africa 2300-
300 years ago. The three oldest individuals
dating to 2300-1800 years ago were genetically
related to the descendants of the southern Khoe-
San groups, and the four younger individuals
who lived 500-300 years ago were genetically
related to current-day South African Bantu-
speaking groups. "This illustrates the population
replacement that occurred in southern Africa",
says co-first author Carina Schlebusch,
population geneticist at Uppsala University.

The authors estimate the divergence among

modern humans to have occurred between
350,000 and 260,000 years ago, based on the
ancient Stone Age hunter-gatherer genomes.
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9/28/2017 Modern humans emerged more than 300,000 years ago, new study suggests | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past

The deepest split time of 350,000 years ago

represents a comparison between an ancient
Stone Age hunter-gatherer boy from Ballito Bay
on the east coast of South Africa and the West
African Mandinka. "This means that modern
humans emerged earlier than previously
thought", says Mattias Jakobsson, population
geneticist at Uppsala University who headed the
project together with Stone Age archaeologist
Marlize Lombard at the University of
Johannesburg.

The fossil record of east Africa, and in particular

the Omo and Herto fossils have often been used
to set the emergence of anatomically modern
humans to about 180,000 years ago. The deeper
estimate for modern human divergence at
350,000-260,000 years ago coincides with the
Florisbad and Hoedjiespunt fossils,
contemporaries of the small-brained Homo
naledi in southern Africa. "It now seems that at
least two or three Homo species occupied the
southern African landscape during this time
period, which also represents the early phases of
the Middle Stone Age", says Marlize Lombard.
It will be interesting to see in the future if we
find any evidence of interaction between these
groups.

"We did not find any evidence of deep structure

or archaic admixture among southern African
Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Instead, we see
some evidence for deep structure in the West
African population, but that affects only a small
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fraction of their genome and is about the same

age as the deepest divergence among all
humans", says Mattias Jakobsson.

The authors also found that all current-day

Khoe-San populations admixed with migrant
East African pastoralists a little over a thousand
years ago. "We could not detect this widespread
East African admixture previously since we did
not have an un-admixed San group to use as
reference. Now that we have access to ancient
DNA of people who lived on the landscape
before the East African migration, we are able to
detect the admixture percentages in all San
groups. The admixture percentages in the
Khoekhoe, historically identified as pastoralists,
are higher than previously estimated", says
Carina Schlebusch.

Of the Iron Age individuals, three carry at least

one Duffy null allele, protecting against malaria,
and two have at least one sleeping-sickness-
resistance variant in the APOL1 gene. The
Stone Age individuals do not carry these
protective alleles. "This tells us that Iron Age
farmers carried these disease-resistance variants
when they migrated to southern Africa", says
co-first author Helena Malmstrm, archaeo-
geneticist at Uppsala University.

Marlize Lombard said that "archaeological

deposits dating to the time of the split by
350,000-260,000 years ago, attest to South
Africa being populated by tool-making hunter-
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9/28/2017 Modern humans emerged more than 300,000 years ago, new study suggests | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past

gatherers at the time. Although human fossils

are sparse, those of Florisbad and Hoedjiespunt
are seen as transitional to modern humans."
These fossils may therefore be ancestral to the
Ballito Bay boy and other San hunter-gatherers
who lived in southern Africa 2000 years ago.

The transition from archaic to modern humans

might not have occurred in one place in Africa
but in several, including southern Africa and
northern Africa as recently reported. "Thus, both
palaeo-anthropological and genetic evidence
increasingly points to multiregional origins of
anatomically modern humans in Africa, i.e.
Homo sapiens did not originate in one place in
Africa, but might have evolved from older
forms in several places on the continent with
gene flow between groups from different
places", says Carina Schlebusch.

"It is remarkable that we can now sequence

entire genomes of ancient human remains from
tropical areas, such as the southeast coast of
South Africa", says Helena Malmstrm. This is
promising for our several ongoing investigations
in Africa.

____________________________________

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9/28/2017 Modern humans emerged more than 300,000 years ago, new study suggests | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past

Dr. Helena Malmstrm conducting on-site

sampling of bone material in a mobil sampling
lab. Credit: Uppsala University
____________________________________________________

Demographic model of African history and

estimated divergences. Vertical colored lines
represent migration, with down-pointing

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9/28/2017 Modern humans emerged more than 300,000 years ago, new study suggests | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past

triangles representing admixture into another

group. Southern African hunter-gatherers are
shown by red symbols, and Iron Age farmers as
green symbols. Extracted from figure
3. Credit: Uppsala University
________________________________________________

Cumulatively these findings shed new light on

our species' deep African history and show that
there is still much more to learn about our
process of becoming modern humans and that
the interplay between genetics and archaeology
has an increasingly important role to play.

(For a related premium article about the

earliest Homo sapiens published at Popular
Archaeology, see On
the Threshold
of Modern Humanity.)
This article source: Edited from the Uppsala
University news release
_________________________________________________

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