Back in 2001, Gregory J. Adcock, et al. published a paper (Mitochondrial DNA sequences in ancient Australians: Implications for modern human origins. PNAS, January 16, 2001 vol. 98 no. 2 537–542) reporting that the remains of a man known as LM3, found close to Lake Mungo in Australia, who lived between 40 and 68,000 years ago, carried a unique mtDNA that placed him in a lineage older than that of the "primordial Eve".
Below is a picture of LM3 at its site in Lake Mungo.
The study showed that LM3 carried a mtDNA variant that is not found in other hominin remains or in modern human beings. It became extinct (most likely because this person's lineage died out and could not pass it on to their descent). This mtDNA has survived h owever, as an insert a "chunk" of genetic material found within chromosome 11 of the human genome. Until then, scholars had asked themselves if this segment of DNA had made its way into the nuclear DNA becoming part of it. This had happened before.
T, Thorne says, is a sequence in LM3's mtDNA that differs both from that of the other fossils and from that of modern people. Now extinct in modern human mtDNA, it exists only as a remnant, or “insert,” on chromosome 11 in the modern nuclear genome. Scientists have long suspected this sequence to be a copy of old mtDNA that found its way into the cell nucleus, as other sequences are known to have done.
"“His mtDNA belonged to a lineage that only survives as a segment inserted into chromosome 11 of the nuclear genome, which is now widespread among human populations.
This lineage probably diverged before the most recent common ancestor of contemporary human mitochondrial genomes. This timing of divergence implies that the deepest known mtDNA lineage from an anatomically modern human occurred in Australia [...] This finding does not imply that all living people originated in Australia [...
Deep lineages in Africa and our finding of an even deeper lineage in Australia are consistent with a number of possible models of the demographic and evolutionary history of our species."
It showed that there was a lot of diversity that was lost during the migration of modern humans around the world. However, the Australian Aboriginal people, who are very (not to say extremely) sensitive about anything that could challenge their position as the first people to inhabit the Island-Continent of Australia, didn't like this finding.
But the paper didn't challenge the Aboriginal priority claim, in fact it stated " LM3 and his contemporaries, as well as the more recent robust KS individuals, all could have been ancestors of living indigenous Australians."
However it also mentioned the option that LM3 was a lineage that reached Australia first, but later was replaced by a second wave of immigrants. LM3 people were "modern humans [...] that were replaced and that part of the replacement occurred in Australia." This implies that the Aboriginals replaced LM3 people.
The third option was that the original people carried many mtDNA variants and that the "insert" haplotype was eliminated through selective pressure, with others replacing it due to natural selection. The mtDNA was lost, but the nuclear genes remained, and "the lineages would have been retained and may well be represented in contemporary indigenous Australians."
Two out of three alternatives favored the first arrival of Aboriginals. But they insisted it was wrong.
They campaigned and got the Australian government to have the bones reburied in the site (Source), which took place in 2022, meaning no further studies.
But before doing this, they produced a second paper (T.H. Heupink,S. Subramanian,J.L. Wright,P. Endicott,M.C. Westaway,L. Huynen,W. Parson,C.D. Millar,E. Willerslev, and D.M. Lambert, (2016). Ancient mtDNA sequences from the First Australians revisited, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113 (25) 6892-6897, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1521066113), concluded (conveniently) that Adcock was mistaken:
"Using second generation DNA sequencing methods, we provide strong evidence that the DNA sequences reported by Adcock et al. were, indeed, contamination. Our manuscript is also important, because the research was planned and conducted and is published with the support of the Barkindji, Ngiyampaa, and Muthi Muthi indigenous groups."
Notice who planned, conducted and supported the publication! The Aboriginal groups! They demolish, as would be expected, Adcock's claims:
"As a consequence, there is no need to explain the presence of robust and gracile morphologies by invoking population replacement or selective sweeps (claim 3). We suggest that all of the sequences reported by Adcock et al. were either modern contamination or PCR artifacts. As a result, it seems that contemporary mitochondrial data are consistent with the Out of Africa theory (claim 4). Of the four Willandra Lakes samples, we show that WLH4 does contain authentic Aboriginal Australian DNA sequences, and we report the complete mitochondrial sequence from this individual."
So, they found contamination, European DNA, etc. and proved that the Aboriginals were the first and only humans in Austalia until the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon reached it 1606.
I find the idea of a first wave of humans (maybe Denisovans, or even H. longi) reaching Australia 100 or 200,000 years ago exciting. They could have lived there and then admixed with the later H. sapiens migration, and gradually faded away, mixing time and time again with the newcomers forming the modern Aboriginal people.
But the Aboriginal people think otherwise:
"Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from 'time immemorial', and according to science more than 60,000 years ago."
Above is a quote from the Uluru statement from the Heart presented in 2017.
A study published last June (Jim Allen, James F. O'Connell (2025). Recent DNA Studies Question a 65 kya Arrival of Humans in Sahul. Archaeology in Oceania. 29 June 2025 https://doi.org/10.1002/arco.70002) pushed that date closer in time: after than 50,000 years ago. It argues that "Recent reports present evidence of Neanderthal introgression among all non-African human populations after 50 kya. Here we trace the implications of this claim for Sahul history ... Jacobs et al. (2019) identify two Denisovan introgressions involving modern humans in Sahul, the earlier one at 46 kya... If correct, ancestral Sahul populations bearing Neanderthal DNA must have arrived after this date."
Which also allows for an ancient peopling of Australia before the Aboriginal people arrived around 45 to 50 thousand years ago.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
No comments:
Post a Comment