{"id":343768,"date":"2025-12-14T13:28:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/modern-humans-reached-australia-around-60000-years-ago-via-two-routes-genetic-analysis-suggests\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T13:28:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:28:29","slug":"modern-humans-reached-australia-around-60000-years-ago-via-two-routes-genetic-analysis-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=343768","title":{"rendered":"Modern Humans Reached Australia Around 60,000 Years Ago via Two Routes, Genetic Analysis Suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The study bolsters one hypothesis of when people arrived at the landmass that became Australia and other islands, and presents some of the earliest evidence of seafaring<\/h2>\n
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Margherita Bassi<\/a><\/p>\n

– Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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A new study hints that Australia’s first people arrived via a major northern route and a smaller southern route.\u00a0
\n Helen Farr and Erich Fisher, CC BY-NC-SA<\/a>, via the Conversation<\/span>
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Researchers have long debated when people reached the landmass Sahul, which started splitting into New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania around 9,000 years ago. The \u201clong chronology\u201d hypothesis suggests the earliest main arrivals occurred around 65,000 to 60,000 years ago, while the \u201cshort chronology\u201d posits that happened roughly 51,000 to 47,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

Now, researchers report new genetic evidence for the long chronology, suggesting that humans first arrived on the ancient continent via two different paths around 60,000 years ago. The findings, published November 28 in the journal\u00a0Science Advances<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0also present one of the earliest cases of seafaring.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first really comprehensive study that links the archaeology and the genetics\u2014looking at seafaring and timing and climate\u2014and makes a really strong argument around when people first got here,\u201d\u00a0Christopher Clarkson<\/a>, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia who was not involved in the study, tells\u00a0Australian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a>\u2019s Jacinta Bowler. \u201cI hope that it will have a strong impact on the discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the new work, the team examined entire sets of genetic instructions, or genomes, from a part of the cell where DNA is typically inherited only from mothers. The approach allowed the researchers to trace maternal lineages\u2014and the mutations amassed by the genetic material\u2014across many generations.<\/p>\n

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Need to know: Where did this maternal-lineage DNA come from?<\/h4>\n

The genetic material used in this study came from the powerhouses of the cell: mitochondria. DNA in these organelles usually only comes from our mothers. That\u2019s because mitochondria from sperm, which hold our fathers\u2019 genes, are typically destroyed<\/a> after the sperm and egg unite.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Researchers combined genomes from nearly 1,000 people, mostly New Guineans and\u00a0Aboriginal<\/a> individuals, one of the first peoples to inhabit Australia, with almost 1,500 previously published genomes.\u00a0Looking at mutations in the genetic material helped the team trace lineages unique to Australia and New Guinea. The oldest lineages date back 60,000 years, the analysis suggested, which aligns with past male-lineage and other genetic data.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the findings point to at least two different migrations around the same time. One group likely followed a northern route, entering Sahul via what\u2019s now the Philippines, and another traveled a southern path, coming from modern-day mainland Southeast Asia. Most living lineages descend from ancestors who journeyed via the northern route, the team found.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this study offers strong support to the growing idea that the northern route was the key to the initial peopling of Australia,\u201d Adam Brumm<\/a>, an archaeologist\u00a0at Griffith University in Australia who also wasn\u2019t involved in the research, tells\u00a0New Scientist<\/em><\/a>\u2019s James Woodford. \u201cThis is already becoming increasingly more likely on the basis of our discoveries of very old cave art in Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two groups hailed from one population that left Africa around 70,000 to 80,000 years ago, study co-author Martin Richards<\/a>, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England, tells\u00a0Live Science<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Kristina Killgrove in an email. \u201cWe think they split during the dispersal east, in South Asia or Southeast Asia,\u201d potentially 10,000 to 20,000 years before arriving in Sahul.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur results indicate that Aboriginal Australians, along with New Guineans, have the most ancient unbroken ancestry of any group of people outside of Africa,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

These travelers probably interbred with archaic humans like\u00a0Homo longi<\/em>,\u00a0H. luzonensis<\/em>\u00a0and even the \u201chobbit\u201d species,\u00a0H. floresiensis<\/em>, Richards says to the outlet, though researchers are unsure how much modern humans interacted with those species.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the migration must have been intentional,\u00a0study co-author Helen Farr<\/a>, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England, tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see evidence that people were using boats, stepping offshore and making bluewater crossings as early as 60,000 years ago,\u201d she tells the outlet. \u201cThe southern route would still have involved an open water voyage of around 100 km or more. \u2026 These were not one-off accidental drift events, but some of the earliest evidence we have for seafaring.\u201d<\/p>\n

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