1. A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia.
- Author
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Malaspinas AS, Westaway MC, Muller C, Sousa VC, Lao O, Alves I, Bergström A, Athanasiadis G, Cheng JY, Crawford JE, Heupink TH, Macholdt E, Peischl S, Rasmussen S, Schiffels S, Subramanian S, Wright JL, Albrechtsen A, Barbieri C, Dupanloup I, Eriksson A, Margaryan A, Moltke I, Pugach I, Korneliussen TS, Levkivskyi IP, Moreno-Mayar JV, Ni S, Racimo F, Sikora M, Xue Y, Aghakhanian FA, Brucato N, Brunak S, Campos PF, Clark W, Ellingvåg S, Fourmile G, Gerbault P, Injie D, Koki G, Leavesley M, Logan B, Lynch A, Matisoo-Smith EA, McAllister PJ, Mentzer AJ, Metspalu M, Migliano AB, Murgha L, Phipps ME, Pomat W, Reynolds D, Ricaut FX, Siba P, Thomas MG, Wales T, Wall CM, Oppenheimer SJ, Tyler-Smith C, Durbin R, Dortch J, Manica A, Schierup MH, Foley RA, Lahr MM, Bowern C, Wall JD, Mailund T, Stoneking M, Nielsen R, Sandhu MS, Excoffier L, Lambert DM, and Willerslev E
- Subjects
- Africa ethnology, Australia, Datasets as Topic, Desert Climate, Gene Flow, Genetics, Population, History, Ancient, Human Migration history, Humans, Language, New Guinea, Population Dynamics, Tasmania, Genome, Human genetics, Genomics, Phylogeny, Racial Groups genetics
- Abstract
The population history of Aboriginal Australians remains largely uncharacterized. Here we generate high-coverage genomes for 83 Aboriginal Australians (speakers of Pama-Nyungan languages) and 25 Papuans from the New Guinea Highlands. We find that Papuan and Aboriginal Australian ancestors diversified 25-40 thousand years ago (kya), suggesting pre-Holocene population structure in the ancient continent of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania). However, all of the studied Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that differentiated ~10-32 kya. We infer a population expansion in northeast Australia during the Holocene epoch (past 10,000 years) associated with limited gene flow from this region to the rest of Australia, consistent with the spread of the Pama-Nyungan languages. We estimate that Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from Eurasians 51-72 kya, following a single out-of-Africa dispersal, and subsequently admixed with archaic populations. Finally, we report evidence of selection in Aboriginal Australians potentially associated with living in the desert.
- Published
- 2016
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